2006-11-28 41 1 7 REPS 0 0 2006-11-28 The SPEAKER (Hon. David Hawker) took the chair at 12.30 pm and read prayers. 1 MISCELLANEOUS Mr BARTLETT (Macquarie) 12:31:00 —by leave—I move: That, unless otherwise ordered, for the Main Committee meeting today the first item of business shall be 3 minute statements continuing for a period of 30 minutes, irrespective of suspensions for divisions in the House. Question agreed to. 1 BILLS R2473 1 Consideration resumed from 2 November. First unresolved question— That the amendment moved by the honourable member for Watson be agreed to:                 Clause 21, page 18 (line 2), after “17”, insert “or 18”. 1 12:32:00 Burke, Tony, MP DYW Watson ALP 0 0 Mr BURKE —We have a very simple amendment before the chamber to fix a problem which has arisen for the Maltese community. The government has acknowledged that one section of the Maltese community who lost their Australian citizenship—they and their children—should be allowed to regain it. In a parallel situation, the government acknowledges that it is appropriate to let back in another section of the Maltese community who were forced to renounce Australian citizenship, but it does not want to do the same for their children. The government’s argument is that their children do not have a sufficient connection to Australia. Labor believes that the connection between children and their parents is as close as a connection can get. This situation does not affect a lot of people, and it is something which the Maltese community has been crying out for for some time. It is something that should have attracted some bipartisanship in the parliament. The Labor Party offered that, if the government want to make this amendment theirs, we will grant leave for them to vary it in whatever way they want to. What we have here is simply sensible public policy. There appears to be no national security concern or anything like that; it simply appears to be a case where the government have drafted the legislation in this way and they are sticking to their guns no matter what the merits of the case. In the Main Committee the member for Prospect and the member for Gorton made a compelling case as to why the cries of the Maltese community in Australia should be heard, as to why this is to the betterment of Australia and as to why it is really not too long a stretch: if you are looking at whether someone has a significant connection to Australia, the connection between parents and their children is not a bad one to start with. Question put: That the amendment (Mr Burke’s) be agreed to. 14 12:46:00 Burke, Tony, MP DYW Watson ALP 0 0 Mr BURKE —There are two deeply offensive parts to the amendments that this House is dealing with. After the London bombings we had the government putting around the press gallery—and it was published everywhere—that there was a 10-point antiterrorism plan. One of those issues was that citizenship should move from two years to three years. That information went out to the gallery, to the nation and to the world after all the leaders of the governments in Australia had been given the best security information that was available and the best security briefings by ASIO. They decided that the balance should be struck at three years. But then briefings were given by someone else—we can only assume that it was Mark Textor. Briefings were given by someone else who had nothing to do with national security. They said, ‘Labor’s agreed to three years for Australian citizenship, so we’d better go one step further to make sure Labor disagrees.’ They went one step further: they went to four years. Make no mistake, our reason for refusing to go to four years is that we will not go against what was unanimously agreed in the counter-terrorism plan. It might be good enough for the government to say that all the leaders of all the governments in Australia can agree on something but if a pollster says the parliamentary secretary ought to do something different then it will be switched. That might be good enough for them, but we will not support an extension to four years for the waiting time for Australian citizenship. It is a careful balance. You have to get that balance right and you should base that on the security information, not on the polling information. Something else came out in the course of debate. When this debate was adjourned to the Main Committee, I offered on the floor of the House that, if the government wanted to adjust this amendment, we would grant leave to adjust it. The government decided not to bother doing that. We now have an amendment before us which says that a limited group of people who are classified under this amendment as stateless persons will be prohibited from getting Australian citizenship if they have been convicted—this is under amendment (47)—of an offence under Australian law, or a foreign law, for which the person has been sentenced to a period of imprisonment of at least five years. I have no problem, if someone is being jailed overseas, for that to ring alarm bells and send an alert to the minister. I do not mind it being deferred to ministerial discretion. But I am disgusted that Australian citizenship, of all things, will be deferred to a foreign power—that if a foreign power has decided to imprison someone for five years then the Australian government loses control of Australian citizenship. It is for a limited class of people. This government has outsourced many things in its time, but I never thought we would outsource Australian citizenship. If we were going to outsource it, I never thought we would pick the worst regimes in the world. Someone who fits the classification for a stateless person under this amendment could have been imprisoned in the cell next door to Nelson Mandela for being an antiapartheid activist. This legislation says that that person is prohibited—there is no discretion at all—from gaining Australian citizenship. Someone could have been imprisoned by Saddam Hussein, and the Australian minister will not be able to make them an Australian citizen because we have deferred that power to the authority of a tyrant. Yesterday we got a report about giving him money; today we get legislation to give him control of citizenship. It is disgraceful for us to be in this situation, where it has been pointed out to the government and they could not be bothered making the amendment. They could not be bothered saying that Australian citizenship ought to be one of the things the should be in the control of Australia. As I said, I have no problems at all saying that this should ring an alarm bell, that this should give an alert, but the final decision should lie with the Australian minister. There will be many times when I do not like the way the government exercise their discretion. But if it is a choice between whether the discretion goes to an Australian minister or to the people who locked up Aung San Suu Kyi, I will pick the Australian minister. It should give rise to a discretion, but it is unforgivable for this government—for the first time in our history—to be saying that a foreign power gets control of anyone’s Australian citizenship. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —The question now is that government amendments (1) to (76) be agreed to. 12:38:00 The House divided.     (The Speaker—Hon. David Hawker) 56 Adams, D.G.H. Albanese, A.N. Andren, P.J. Beazley, K.C. Bevis, A.R. Bird, S. Bowen, C. Burke, A.E. Burke, A.S. Byrne, A.M. Crean, S.F. Danby, M. * Edwards, G.J. Elliot, J. Ellis, A.L. Emerson, C.A. Ferguson, L.D.T. Fitzgibbon, J.A. Garrett, P. Georganas, S. George, J. Gibbons, S.W. Gillard, J.E. Grierson, S.J. Griffin, A.P. Hall, J.G. * Hatton, M.J. Hayes, C.P. Hoare, K.J. Irwin, J. Kerr, D.J.C. King, C.F. Lawrence, C.M. Livermore, K.F. Macklin, J.L. McMullan, R.F. Melham, D. Murphy, J.P. O’Connor, B.P. O’Connor, G.M. Owens, J. Plibersek, T. Price, L.R.S. Quick, H.V. Ripoll, B.F. Roxon, N.L. Rudd, K.M. Sawford, R.W. Sercombe, R.C.G. Smith, S.F. Swan, W.M. Tanner, L. Thomson, K.J. Vamvakinou, M. Wilkie, K. Windsor, A.H.C. 79 Anderson, J.D. Andrews, K.J. Bailey, F.E. Baird, B.G. Baker, M. Baldwin, R.C. Barresi, P.A. Bartlett, K.J. Billson, B.F. Bishop, B.K. Bishop, J.I. Broadbent, R. Brough, M.T. Cadman, A.G. Causley, I.R. Ciobo, S.M. Cobb, J.K. Costello, P.H. Downer, A.J.G. Dutton, P.C. Elson, K.S. Entsch, W.G. Farmer, P.F. Fawcett, D. Ferguson, M.D. Forrest, J.A. Gambaro, T. Gash, J. Georgiou, P. Haase, B.W. Hardgrave, G.D. Hartsuyker, L. Henry, S. Hockey, J.B. Hull, K.E. * Hunt, G.A. Jensen, D. Johnson, M.A. Jull, D.F. Katter, R.C. Keenan, M. Kelly, D.M. Kelly, J.M. Laming, A. Ley, S.P. Lindsay, P.J. Lloyd, J.E. Macfarlane, I.E. Markus, L. May, M.A. McArthur, S. * McGauran, P.J. Mirabella, S. Moylan, J.E. Nairn, G.R. Neville, P.C. Prosser, G.D. Pyne, C. Randall, D.J. Richardson, K. Robb, A. Ruddock, P.M. Schultz, A. Scott, B.C. Secker, P.D. Slipper, P.N. Smith, A.D.H. Somlyay, A.M. Stone, S.N. Thompson, C.P. Tollner, D.W. Truss, W.E. Tuckey, C.W. Vaile, M.A.J. Vale, D.S. Vasta, R. Wakelin, B.H. Washer, M.J. Wood, J. Question negatived. 12:55:00 The House divided.     (The Speaker—Hon. David Hawker) 79 Anderson, J.D. Andrews, K.J. Bailey, F.E. Baird, B.G. Baker, M. Baldwin, R.C. Barresi, P.A. Bartlett, K.J. Billson, B.F. Bishop, B.K. Bishop, J.I. Broadbent, R. Brough, M.T. Cadman, A.G. Causley, I.R. Ciobo, S.M. Cobb, J.K. Costello, P.H. Dutton, P.C. Elson, K.S. Entsch, W.G. Farmer, P.F. Fawcett, D. Ferguson, M.D. Forrest, J.A. Gambaro, T. Gash, J. Georgiou, P. Haase, B.W. Hardgrave, G.D. Hartsuyker, L. Henry, S. Hockey, J.B. Hull, K.E. * Hunt, G.A. Jensen, D. Johnson, M.A. Jull, D.F. Katter, R.C. Keenan, M. Kelly, D.M. Kelly, J.M. Laming, A. Ley, S.P. Lindsay, P.J. Lloyd, J.E. Macfarlane, I.E. Markus, L. May, M.A. McArthur, S. * McGauran, P.J. Mirabella, S. Moylan, J.E. Nairn, G.R. Neville, P.C. Prosser, G.D. Pyne, C. Randall, D.J. Richardson, K. Robb, A. Ruddock, P.M. Schultz, A. Scott, B.C. Secker, P.D. Slipper, P.N. Smith, A.D.H. Somlyay, A.M. Stone, S.N. Thompson, C.P. Tollner, D.W. Truss, W.E. Tuckey, C.W. Turnbull, M. Vaile, M.A.J. Vale, D.S. Vasta, R. Wakelin, B.H. Washer, M.J. Wood, J. 57 Adams, D.G.H. Albanese, A.N. Andren, P.J. Beazley, K.C. Bevis, A.R. Bird, S. Bowen, C. Burke, A.E. Burke, A.S. Byrne, A.M. Crean, S.F. Danby, M. * Edwards, G.J. Elliot, J. Ellis, A.L. Ellis, K. Emerson, C.A. Ferguson, L.D.T. Fitzgibbon, J.A. Garrett, P. Georganas, S. George, J. Gibbons, S.W. Gillard, J.E. Grierson, S.J. Griffin, A.P. Hall, J.G. * Hatton, M.J. Hayes, C.P. Hoare, K.J. Irwin, J. Kerr, D.J.C. King, C.F. Lawrence, C.M. Livermore, K.F. Macklin, J.L. McMullan, R.F. Melham, D. Murphy, J.P. O’Connor, B.P. O’Connor, G.M. Owens, J. Plibersek, T. Price, L.R.S. Quick, H.V. Ripoll, B.F. Roxon, N.L. Rudd, K.M. Sawford, R.W. Sercombe, R.C.G. Smith, S.F. Swan, W.M. Tanner, L. Thomson, K.J. Vamvakinou, M. Wilkie, K. Windsor, A.H.C. Question agreed to. 16 Mr ROBB (Goldstein —Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs) 13:02:00 —by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. 16 BILLS R2470 16 Debate resumed from 9 November 2005 on motion by Mr McGauran: That this bill be now read a second time. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. 16 Bill—by leave—taken as a whole. 16 13:03:00 Robb, Andrew, MP FU4 Goldstein LP Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs 1 0 Mr ROBB —by leave—I present a supplementary explanatory memorandum to the bill. I move government amendments (1) to (8): (1)    Clause 2, page 2 (table item 2), omit “sections 3”, substitute “sections 2A”. (2)    Schedule 3, item 1, page 12 (line 8), omit “3”, substitute “2A”. (3)    Schedule 3, item 2, page 12 (line 13) to page 13 (line 10), omit the item, substitute: 2  Rules applicable to Australian citizens under the old Act (1)    This item applies to a person who was an Australian citizen under the Australian Citizenship Act 1948 immediately before the commencement day. Note:                The person becomes an Australian citizen under the new Act: see subsection 4(1) of the new Act. Same kind of citizenship (2)    If the person, immediately before the commencement day, was an Australian citizen under the provision set out in column 2 of the following table, the person is taken, on and from that day, to be an Australian citizen under the provision set out in column 3 of the table: Same kind of citizenship Column 1 Item Column 2 Provision under which person was a citizen Column 3 Provision under which person is taken to be a citizen 1 Section 10B, 10C or 11 of the old Act Subdivision A of Division 2 of Part 2 of the new Act 2 Division 2 of Part III of the old Act Subdivision B of Division 2 of Part 2 of the new Act Person may cease to be a citizen under new Act (3)    This item does not prevent the person from ceasing to be an Australian citizen under the new Act. Note:                For example, section 34 of the new Act allows the Minister to revoke a person’s citizenship. (1)    Section 19C of the new Act applies in relation to adoptions that occur before, on or after the commencement day. (2)    Paragraphs 19C(2)(e) and (f) of the new Act apply as if a reference to Subdivision A included a reference to section 10B, 10C or 11 of the old Act (about citizenship by descent). (8)    In applying section 22 of the new Act to a new application covered by subitem (2), subsections 22(1) to (2), (4A) and (5A) of the new Act do not apply and the following subsections of section 22 of the new Act apply instead: Question agreed to. Bill, as amended, agreed to. 18 Mr ROBB (Goldstein —Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs) 13:04:00 —by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. 18 BILLS S529 18 Bill received from the Senate, and read a first time. 18 18 13:05:00 Ruddock, Philip, MP 0J4 Berowra LP Attorney-General 1 0 Mr RUDDOCK —I present the explanatory memorandum to this bill. I move: That this bill be now read a second time. The Crimes Amendment (Bail and Sentencing) Bill 2006 ensures that all Australians are treated equally under the law and that criminal behaviour cannot be excused or justified by customary practice or cultural law. At the Intergovernmental Summit on Violence and Child Abuse in Indigenous Communities, held here in Canberra last June, the Australian government expressed serious concern about the high level of violence and abuse in Indigenous communities. Following the summit, we called on all state and territory Labor governments to work with us to ensure that all Australians are equally subject to the law and that all Australians can expect the same protection under the law. This issue was also tackled by the Prime Minister and state and territory Labor leaders at the July Council of Australian Governments meeting, who agreed that the law’s response to family and community violence and sexual abuse must reflect the seriousness of such crimes. Criminal behaviour can never, in any form, be excused, justified, authorised, required or rendered less serious because of customary law or cultural practice. Nor has it ever been intended that customary law or cultural practice should be used to aggravate the seriousness of criminal behaviour. The Australian government firmly rejects the idea that an offender’s cultural background should automatically be considered, when a court is sentencing an offender, so as to mitigate the sentence imposed. Likewise, in the process of granting bail to an alleged offender, this bill will ensure customary law or cultural practice cannot be used as an excuse that the criminal behaviour concerned is somehow less culpable. All Australians, regardless of their background, will thus be equal before the law. At the intergovernmental summit in June, the Commonwealth also indicated that it would show leadership and review bail provisions to ensure that adequate protection is given to alleged victims and potential witnesses, especially those who live in remote communities. Victims and witnesses in remote communities face particular difficulties when alleged offenders are released, and the proposed amendments to the Commonwealth bail provisions will require the impact on such victims and witnesses to be considered in the process of granting bail to the alleged offenders. The recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody were also considered during the formulation of the amendments in this bill. The Australian government is concerned about the relatively high rate of incarceration of Indigenous Australians and the number of Indigenous Australians who die in custody. However, there is no recommendation in the royal commission’s report to the effect that sentences commensurate with the relevant crimes should not be imposed on offenders and that victims and witnesses should not be protected from such offenders. The high levels of family violence and child abuse in Indigenous communities is appalling. The Australian government are committed to protecting Australians from criminal behaviour, and those who are most vulnerable are obviously those most in need of protection. This bill is only one element of our approach to addressing these difficult issues. The amendments in the bill are complemented by the law enforcement initiatives which include the creation of a National Indigenous Violence and Child Abuse Intelligence Task Force to facilitate the sharing of information and intelligence on crimes of violence and child abuse in the Indigenous community. There are also initiatives underway for community legal education and judicial cultural awareness training. These initiatives are in addition to actions that the Australian government is already undertaking to address complexities that Indigenous Australians face within the justice system, including initiatives through the national community crime prevention programs, the Prevention, Diversion, Rehabilitation and Restorative Justice program, and the Family Violence Prevention Legal Services program. The Australian government will continue taking practical steps to improve the lives of all Australians, whether they live in cities or in remote communities. I thank the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs for their consideration. When the bill was in the Senate, the government addressed the committee’s concerns by adopting recommendation 1 in principle, by giving consideration to customary law and cultural practice. Specifically, if a court cannot reduce the penalty under legislation then it should also not be able to increase the penalty. The Australian government will continue to work with the states and territories to improve Australia’s justice system. In this regard, the Australian government encourages the states and territories to follow our lead and adopt similar sentencing and bail provisions. In the Senate, Senator Ludwig raised a matter in relation to provisions that deal with a court exercising powers to take into account customary law or cultural practice for excusing, justifying, lessening or aggravating the seriousness of the criminal behaviour. These provisions enable a sentence to be waived in particular circumstances, taking such matters into account. It also prompted the government to look at some other issues where cultural background and religious beliefs were referred to in the Criminal Code. For that reason, issues relating to the Crimes Act, where the conduct of a forensic procedure might be undertaken, could be avoided if a person’s religious or customary beliefs were taken into account. It is in that context that I will be moving amendments at the committee stage to reinforce the principal message in this legislation on cultural backgrounds. The government intend that cultural background will be removed from section 19B(1)(i) of the Crimes Act. We will add a new subsection to section 19B to ensure that, when a court exercises its powers under section 19B, it cannot take into account any form of customary law or cultural practice as a reason for excusing, justifying, requiring or lessening or aggravating the seriousness of criminal behaviour. We will also remove reference to cultural background and religious beliefs from paragraphs 23WI(3)(c), 23WO(3)(c) and 23WT(3)(c) of the Crimes Act. In similar paragraphs, we will repeal paragraph (d) of the Crimes Act to remove a requirement for a constable, senior constable or magistrate to consider customary beliefs of an Aboriginal person or a Torres Strait Islander before requesting consent or making an order to conduct a forensic procedure. We will also add a new subsection to sections 23WI(4), 23WO(4) and 23WT(4) so that a constable, senior constable or magistrate will be able to consider religious beliefs, where appropriate, when deciding whether there is a less intrusive but reasonably practicable way of obtaining forensic evidence. I make these points, because we will be ensuring that the principle that we believe is appropriate in dealing with these matters also applies to waiver and forensic evidence in the same way that we intended that it should apply in ensuring that such factors are taken into account in mitigation and similarly in granting bail. 20 13:13:00 Roxon, Nicola, MP 83K Gellibrand ALP 0 0 Ms ROXON —Unfortunately, the debate on the Crimes Amendment (Bail and Sentencing) Bill 2006 will not be a pleasant one. As the Attorney-General is no doubt aware, this matter has already been dealt with in another place. Labor opposed the bill in that place and will again oppose the bill here in this House. The reason the debate will be, I would think, particularly poor by the standards that we as law makers would hope we use in this place is that less than 15 minutes before we walked in here, during one of the divisions we have just had, I was handed the amendments that the government will now move to this bill as a result of its party room meeting this morning. Whilst some intention to move some amendments was flagged by our representative in the other place this morning, the amendments have not been seen until now and we will be dealing with them, of course, as the Attorney has flagged, in the detail stage of the debate. We will save our more detailed comments about those amendments until that point in the proceedings. But when this bill pretends to be about dealing with Indigenous violence or violence in Indigenous communities and when it pretends it is about providing some solutions to people, and when we look at the content of the original bill, it does highlight not only that we think it is actually a complete distraction but that the government, by the way it is just doing it on the run and making changes to extra bits and pieces all along, has no intention of dealing with this seriously and no intention of making sure that we have good legislation that is properly considered. For example, the Attorney has mentioned that in the amendments that have just been provided there will be changes to forensic procedures: an entirely different section of the act—nothing that was there when the bill was originally tabled in the Senate, nothing that the Senate committee dealt with and not something that came as a result of recommendations from the Senate committee. And the government wants to introduce them here and vote on them in a number of hours. It expects that that is the best way for us to make decent laws for the country. We are very critical of that approach, just as we are critical of the approach that the government has taken in using this as a scapegoat, if you like, or as a fig leaf to try to cover up for a minister—the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs—who has really not been able to come up with any practical and realistic ways of dealing with this problem. The government is pretending that taking this action of trying to amend the Crimes Act will deliver some relief to Indigenous communities. Labor believes that this is a fundamentally flawed bill. It purports to tackle ‘the relatively high level of violence and abuse in Indigenous communities’—I think that is a quote from the explanatory memorandum. But in reality the terms of this bill will achieve nothing of the sort. The truth of the matter is that the bill is nothing more than a legal fig leaf to cover the inadequacies of the minister purportedly responsible for Indigenous affairs. It is nothing more than a distraction. It has been a waste of the time and energy of this parliament, the media and the Public Service at what I know the Attorney is well aware is a very busy time of the year in legislative terms. Even more significantly, this bill is a distraction from 10 long years of failed Howard government policy in Indigenous affairs and a distraction from finding genuine practical solutions to the very serious problems of violence and sexual abuse in Indigenous communities. So, after 10 years and two national summits on violence in Indigenous communities, all this government has been able to come up with is this minor distraction. At a time of national prosperity—a prosperity built by the previous Labor government—the Howard government has managed to leave Indigenous Australians for a large part worse off than ever before. And this bill will only take us further in the wrong direction. It is also interesting to note that this bill and the particular changes that are proposed in it represent a complete 180-degree turnaround by the government. When you look at the position taken by existing and former members of the government on the Crimes and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 1994, which first introduced the reference to cultural background into subsection 16A(2) that this bill now removes, who do you find supported that bill? It was the members opposite—at that time the opposition. Let us take a look at what Daryl Williams, who later became Attorney-General in the Howard government prior to the current Attorney, had to say back in 1994: The bill will add the words ‘cultural background’ to this list. The effect of this will be to make the cultural background of a convicted federal offender a matter which a court must take into account when passing sentence or making an order. One could interpolate and say that, if the Crimes Act did not specify any matters, it would not be necessary to introduce the cultural background of the offender. But, given that there is something of a checklist for the judges and magistrates to refer to, an exclusion of an item such as the cultural background could suggest an intention that it not be taken into account. This amendment is appropriate. Unfortunately for Mr Williams, this government has overridden his former position and decided that it is no longer appropriate for cultural background to be included in the so-called checklist for judges and magistrates to refer to. Since Mr Williams is no longer in the parliament it would be unfair to speculate on whether he would now be eating his own words, but I am sure that there are a number of people on the government side who baulk at the step that the government has taken and can easily see that this is putting politics and distractions before practical initiatives or measures that might actually make a difference to the community. There are others who spoke in favour of those amendments, including the current Minister for Justice and Customs, Senator Ellison, who had this to say on the 1994 changes: I would indicate that the coalition agrees with the inclusion of cultural background in relation to sentencing principles. I believe that is an aspect which is relevant in a country such as Australia, where there are diverse cultural backgrounds. In my state of Western Australia there have been cases where tribal Aboriginals have been dealt with before the courts and, of course, they have operated under a different cultural background. They have also had to face some sort of penalty from their own tribe and clan. Also, some aspects of a culture bring out different sorts of behaviour in people, and that has to be recognised. In particular, this relates to Aboriginal offenders, but it could apply to anyone in the community. As I say, this is the current justice minister, the person actually responsible for introducing this bill in the other place. But what did we see from Senator Ellison on 8 November when this legislation passed through the Senate? We saw a complete backflip as the minister argued in favour of returning section 16A of the Crimes Act to its pre-1994 state. Senator Ellison argued: ... you should not place too much emphasis on cultural background to the exclusion of other factors and, in fact, to the extent that justice may be distorted. It seems to me that Minister Ellison’s own views have been distorted somewhat in that period of time, and I am sure if his view has not changed somebody has obviously required him to nevertheless pursue this course of action, even when anybody outside this place with even a modicum of interest in criminal law would understand that this is a complete distraction. It was as if Senator Ellison were implying that it is okay for justice to be distorted when the other factors listed in subsection 16A(2), which will continue to be there, were considered—just not cultural background. What a ludicrous position to take! It also appears that, when the government was selecting the degree of difficulty for this backflip that it has taken, it thought it might be an easy routine that it had chosen, but to Senator Ellison’s amazement this turned out not to be the case when the backflip backfired in his face earlier this month. My colleague Senator Ludwig asked the minister during the debate in the other place why the government had chosen to remove the reference to cultural background in relation to factors considered during sentencing yet retain the reference to cultural background among the factors to be considered when a court is deciding whether to dismiss charges or discharge an offender without proceeding to conviction under Section 19B. I understand that this is one of the issues that are being picked up in the late amendments that the Attorney has commented on and has indicated that he is going to move in the consideration in detail stage. It may be, as a result of the embarrassment of that question and the highlighting of the clear lack of consistency in what the government is doing, that after delivering a series of bungled attempts to explain this apparent inconsistency Senator Ellison returned at the end of the debate in the Senate to say that he would raise with the Attorney-General the matters that Senator Ludwig raised in the debate. I have a note here from my colleague saying that he hopes, given the handling of this matter by the minister for justice, that the Attorney might be able to do a better job today. Unfortunately with the time frames that are allowed I am not in any position to know whether or not that better job has been done yet, but we will know that by the time we get to the consideration in detail stage. I think the much more important point this exposes is how this legislation is all about creating a distraction for the ministerial failures of Mr Brough rather than dealing with making sure that criminal legislation that is in place at the Commonwealth level is both good law and consistent law. If the government were serious about fixing these problems with the law, they would have taken a much more consistent, thorough and careful approach. Allow me now to turn in some detail to the contents of the bill. As the short title suggests, it makes changes to two specific areas of the Crimes Act 1914: the provisions for granting bail and the list of matters that courts are expected to take into account during sentencing. With respect to the bail provisions, the inserted section 15AB lists new matters to be considered in granting bail, namely the impact the decision may have on victims or witnesses, potential or otherwise. These new measures, at least in sentiment, may be of some merit. Indeed this section was the only element of the amendments to receive any reasoned support at all from the non-government submissions to the Senate inquiry. That support came from the Aboriginal Legal Services of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, but they stopped short of providing full support, objecting to subparagraph (1)(b), which prohibits the consideration of customary law and cultural practice in bail deliberations. Equivalent prohibitions are made in the context of sentencing, so I will deal with both incidents when I get to those measures, and it is worth noting the government ended up amending those in the Senate. There are two important points worth noting about this section. Firstly, as we speak this matter is still under review by the Council of Australian Governments. On 14 July this year a communique from COAG stated: COAG has asked the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General (SCAG) to report to the next COAG meeting on the extent to which bail provisions and enforcement take particular account of potential impacts on victims and witnesses in remote communities and to recommend any changes required. This makes it grossly premature for the government to be making these amendments. After all, SCAG has not yet had the opportunity to present its report and COAG has not been given a chance to consider any subsequent recommendations. So if this bill is passed there is a strong possibility that we will be back here again in another six or 12 months time, or some period after that, to deal with those recommendations from SCAG or COAG. Senator Ellison tried to argue that a pending review by SCAG and COAG should not be used as an excuse for standing still, yet this is exactly what the government wanted to do with Senator Ludwig’s private senator’s bill, the Crimes Amendment (Victim Impact Statements) Bill 2006, which sought to amend provisions relating to sentencing in the same part of the Crimes Act 1914. In that debate, government senators argued that it would be ‘premature for the government to consider the use of victim impact statements in isolation’, as it was already considering related recommendations from the Australian Law Reform Commission. As Senator Fifield advised: We should take our time. We should make sure that we get it right. We should make sure that we take into account all relevant factors in relation to sentencing policy so that we ensure that we get this right. They are all very fine sentiments, but unfortunately they were not applied to the government itself in the way that it is dealing with this particular bill. In the case of the bill we are considering here today, the government has not followed the senator’s advice one iota. By giving us yet another raft of amendments with little preparation, with little thought and, in respect of the forensic procedures, with no assessment at all by the Senate committee process, how could we say that we are taking the time, as Senator Fifield has advised us to do, to get it right? The government clearly is not doing that. Instead of proceeding through SCAG, as agreed with the states and territories, the Howard government is now legislating unilaterally. This shows just how arrogant and consumed with power this government is becoming. It also shows that the only part of the bill that possesses any possible merit has been acted on in direct contradiction with the government’s own commitments. By disregarding the COAG agreement relating to bail, the government’s attempt to rely on other parts of the communique to justify the remainder of the bill is exposed as an absolute farce. Let me turn to the sentencing provisions and the removal of reference to ‘cultural background’. The second substantive change that the bill seeks is the removal of the reference to ‘cultural background’ that appears in subsection 16A(2), which lists the matters that courts should have regard to when passing sentence. In its second reading speech, the government rejected ‘the idea that an offender’s cultural background should automatically be considered, when a court is sentencing that offender, so as to mitigate the sentence imposed’. This raises the question of whether the government before drafting this bill even bothered to read the existing provisions of the Crimes Act, because when I turned to my copy of the act—and I know my colleagues in the Senate have done this too—I read the following paragraph: In addition to any other matters, the court must take into account such of the following matters as are relevant and known to the court ... Let us think for a moment about the word ‘relevant’, because although subsection 16A(2) does direct the court to take into account a range of matters, including cultural background, it must only do so where those matters are relevant, and it is left to the court to determine whether or not a matter is relevant. If the government wants this legislation to be taken seriously then it cannot just wander into the parliament and reject some unattributed idea. Ideas may be important, but in the end we are here as legislators not philosophers and our currency is the written law. When bringing changes forward it is incumbent on the government to point out the specific failings in the law as it stands and explain in full how these changes will remedy them. To do this, of course, you need to actually read the provisions of the act that is going to be amended, and it seems to us that the government has not taken even this most basic step. Instead of basing its case on both fact and experience, it has relied solely upon some idea, and, as I said, an unattributed one at that. When asked to identify where the consideration of customary law or cultural practice has led to inappropriately lenient sentences the Attorney-General’s Department failed to provide a single case to the Senate committee. And when pressed for the detail of cases, known at the time of drafting, the only example that the government could provide related to an unsuccessful attempt to use hunting traditions as a defence for hunting birds that were listed as endangered. I think it highlights how silly the government has been in the drafting of these provisions and its determination to pursue some other sort of agenda, like distracting from the minister’s other failings, rather than trying to make our law the best and most appropriate law it can be. I will turn now to the original amendments that will direct authorities in granting bail under subparagraph 15AB(1)(b) and those directing courts in sentencing under subsection 16A(2A) to exclude from consideration: ... any form of customary law or cultural practice as a reason for excusing, justifying, authorising, requiring or rendering less serious the alleged criminal behaviour to which the alleged offence relates, or the criminal behaviour to which the offence relates. The Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee argued that this original drafting would have meant: ... that a court could not take into account customary law or cultural practice to render criminal behaviour less serious but could consider these factors if it rendered criminal behaviour more serious. Fortunately the government has taken on board the Senate committee’s view in this instance, an all too rare occurrence these days. But this only serves to reinforce the hasty fashion in which the bill has been thrown together. Although it is a clear improvement, neither the bill as a whole nor the individual provisions are in any way sufficiently redeemed. The Senate inquiry into the bill was on the whole quite scathing. In the majority report, specific attention was drawn to the lack of consultation that occurred in drafting the legislation—something that appears, unfortunately, to be an emerging trend under the Howard government. The consequences of inadequate consultation can be seen in the almost unanimous denigration of the bill by those who gave evidence to the committee. The key criticisms are summarised in the majority report as follows: the bill is both misguided and ill-conceived, and it will do little in a practical sense to address the violence and abuse in Indigenous communities; the bill risks further discriminating against minority cultures; the bill runs contrary to the findings of major relevant inquiries, particularly the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Deaths in Custody; the bill will restrict judicial discretion; and the bill may undermine important initiatives involving Indigenous customary law, such as circular sentencing. In addition to the recommended amendment mentioned previously, the majority report also urged the government not to remove the reference to ‘cultural background’ from the act. Although all of the recommendations made by the majority members would undoubtedly improve the bill, as noted by the minority report prepared by the Labor senators on the committee, they would ‘ultimately leave it gutted’. As such, the majority report’s attempt to salvage the bill was just another face-saving exercise for the minister for Indigenous affairs. As mentioned earlier, these changes will also have almost no effect on violence and sexual abuse in Indigenous communities. Yet this is precisely what the bill purports to impact upon. Why is this the case? Because in the main these sorts of offences are covered by state and territory legislation—something noted by the Senate committee and almost every organisation that made a submission to the inquiry but seemingly missed by the government. Just as some indication, looking at federal prisoners who might be covered by our Crimes Act, as of 1 September 2006, three-quarters were incarcerated under drug importation offences. Looking at the 74 prisoners convicted under the Crimes Act, which make up the bulk of the residual, more than half of those were related to social security. So just how these changes are going to make any impact upon the serious problems of domestic violence and sexual abuse is, frankly, anyone’s guess. Mind you, we are not here to play a guessing game, especially when it comes to issues as serious as these. This is something that we will never forgive the government for: exploiting the goodwill of the wider community and this parliament and our desire to stamp out violence and sexual abuse wherever it is found to divert attention from the minister’s failings. This is a sad joke by the government. The bill is a nonsense bill and Labor will not be supporting it. I will make some other brief comments about the amendments that have just been provided to us. As I said, we have only had a very short period of time to look at those and we will deal with them in more detail when we get to the consideration in detail stage. It is of concern to us not only that the government drafted such a poor bill initially—which, when it was dealt with by the Senate committee, there were many recommendations to change; even the coalition members could see how inadequately these provisions had been drafted—but that it appears that the majority of the amendments the government now wants to move are entirely unrelated to the provisions of the initial bill and to the inquiry conducted by the Senate committee. Nowhere has there been any indication that forensic procedures were going to be part of this, yet the additional amendments deal particularly with forensic procedures. It appears either that the Attorney does not understand that forensic procedures are not bail and sentencing procedures or, alternatively, that he is seeking to create some sort of omnibus bill where none existed before. It would be more appropriate for us to properly examine these amendments rather than have them moved as last-minute amendments to what is already a very poorly drafted and inadequate bill—rather than just tacking them on without the proper consideration of the parliament and the party rooms, and, much more importantly, of the community, who have had no opportunity at all to comment on these other provisions. These amendments represent embarrassing and increasingly erratic law making by the minister for justice and the Attorney-General. It is a worry to us that the government would use this opportunity to make such significant changes without adequate consultation. I will reserve my remaining remarks on the particular amendments until they are moved later in the day in the consideration in detail stage. But we do flag our opposition to the bill and to the government’s incredibly inadequate handling of the issue of violence within the community and its using this as a distraction when much more important practical measures should be being taken. 27 13:37:00 Keenan, Michael, MP E0J Stirling LP 1 0 Mr KEENAN —Unlike the previous speaker, the member for Gellibrand, I rise to strongly support the Crimes Amendment (Bail and Sentencing) Bill 2006 and I want to address some of the criticisms that she has made of it. Firstly, she spent a lot of her speech going through comments that had been made by members on this side of the House when the changes were initially introduced in the dying days of the Keating government in 1994. I think it is fair to say that the thinking in this area of government in Indigenous affairs has evolved significantly since that time—on both sides of the House—and I think these changes reflect some of that new thinking. She spent a lot of time criticising Minister Brough, the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, for his handling of this policy area, but I think what he has done in highlighting these issues has been tremendously courageous. When he highlighted these issues you knew that all the usual suspects would come out and call him a racist and say it was just the oppressive Howard government dealing with these issues, but I think these problems have been swept under the carpet for far too long. I commend him on taking the stance he has in trying to actively deal with these issues. I think it is vital that this parliament take a very strong position that categorically says to all Australians that we are all equal before the law and, as such, we are all fully entitled to the protection of that law. To say that cultural background or coming from a particular community represents mitigation for committing a crime is an appalling message for this parliament to send. This is an issue that requires Commonwealth leadership, even though a lot of the criminal law where the changes will need to be made comes under state and territory jurisdiction. This bill provides the leadership to the states and territories on this issue, and I note that the sentiments expressed in it were endorsed by COAG. This bill represents only one part of an overall process to deal with extraordinarily difficult issues of family violence and child abuse within Indigenous communities. I cannot say too strongly that every Australian, including every member of an Indigenous community, is entitled to the protection of the law. The acts of criminals should never be justified and they should not be rendered less serious because of customary law or cultural practice. I reject the idea that a person who is found guilty of a crime should have their cultural background automatically considered, when a court is sentencing that offender, so as to mitigate the sentence that is being imposed. This bill will stop any customary law or cultural practice from being taken into account in the process of granting bail so that the criminal behaviour concerned is not seen to be less culpable. I represent in this place a seat, Stirling, that is extraordinarily culturally diverse. In that way it is a very good reflection of the country as a whole. We have immigrant populations that represent every wave of migration to Australia, from the post-World War II era when the arrivals were southern Europeans, through to the large Vietnamese migrations of the mid-seventies and now to the latest arrivals, under Australia’s very generous humanitarian program, who are coming in particular from North Africa. Within the seat of Stirling all the world’s religions are represented. It is a microcosm of Australia in the sense that you can find representatives there of any particular cultural group. I often attend citizenship ceremonies—the City of Stirling, my local council, holds them every three weeks—and literally hundreds of people are inducted at every ceremony. So the seat has a growing and very diverse population. I think that is a good reflection of one of this nation’s strengths, and this diversity actually enhances us. But nobody has ever come to me and said that they think we should have a two-speed law based on culture in this country. We do not have a situation where people have differing levels of citizenship or differing protection through the law. As soon as you become a citizen of Australia you are 100 per cent equal to anybody who was born here or whose family goes back generations here. This practice of all of us being equal is a vitally important part of our legal framework. But it has been infiltrated by the idea that a person’s cultural background is a valid excuse for committing criminal actions. I think if we follow this line of thinking—and I am not speaking on the basis of hard evidence, but I think it is reasonable to assume that the victims of crime would often be victims at the hands of somebody from a similar background to theirs—then we need to ask what it effectively means for the cultural groups that we are talking about. What it means, Mr Deputy Speaker, is that they are not going to be as equally protected as you or I are in this place. I think it would be an absolute disaster for the parliament to propagate a view like that. The term ‘cultural background’ was inserted into the Crimes Act in 1994 in the Keating government’s response to an Australian Law Reform Commission report entitled Multiculturalism and the law. I think this provides us with an excellent example of the excesses that politically correct multiculturalism can generate. I love the diversity of my seat but, as I have said, nobody has ever expressed the desire to me that we have separate laws for different cultural groups. I think the excesses of a policy like that are no more evident than in the treatment of Aboriginal Australians. It seems that in the minds of some in this place the protection of Australia law does not apply equally to everybody. The most disturbing example was one that received quite a lot of publicity at the time, and that was when a totally inadequate sentence was handed down to an Aboriginal man in the Northern Territory who had been convicted of physically and sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl who had been his so-called promised bride. The judge handed down a sentence of a mere four months in jail because he took into account the cultural practice of having a promised bride. I think some of the difficulties that can arise when traditional Aboriginal culture collide with Western society are obvious. But if we are going to accept that cultural practices that injure or harm young people are more acceptable in the Aboriginal culture than they would be in our own then we are going down a very slippery slope. If we were to say that then we would say that this particular 14-year-old Aboriginal girl is not entitled to the same protection of Australian law as any other Australian 14-year-old. I think that is an outrageous proposition. One of the reasons behind our system of justice is that it deters people from committing crimes. Lenient sentencing that is prepared to take into account cultural factors sends the exact signal that the protection available to members of that community is not the same as the protection that is offered to others. If our legal system sends that signal—that it is prepared to judge people based on their background—then the message will obviously be received that these crimes are somehow less horrifying. This practice of taking into account cultural relativities is not restricted to Aboriginal communities. In recent very widely publicised trials in New South Wales for vicious gang rapes, counsel for the defence argued that the rapists’ backgrounds lessened their responsibility for committing these crimes. Fortunately, the court did not accept that. 83M Plibersek, Tanya, MP Ms Plibersek —That’s right; the court did not accept it. E0J Keenan, Michael, MP Mr KEENAN —But the point is that it is being argued. The fact that it has been argued gives us a good indication that these ideas are becoming acceptable in our society. As a parliament we need to say that they are not. We cannot accept a two-tier legal system in Australia without saying that the protection offered to some is less than that offered to others. It is a straightforward principle that I have heard affirmed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, that human rights trump cultural rights, and it is a straightforward principle that this parliament needs to put its stamp on today. We must say very strongly that all Australians are entitled to 100 per cent protection of the Australian law. This parliament cannot legislate with respect to criminal law in the states and territories. I suspect that the passing of this legislation through the parliament will send a strong signal to them and, hopefully, provide a strong lead for them to follow. If we do not provide leadership on this issue we will, as a parliament, be found very much wanting. We need to send out the message, and send it very strongly—and I ask the state and territory parliaments to follow—that as a parliament we represent all Australians and we do not accept that cultural relativism has any place in our legal system. I strongly endorse the sentiments in this bill. 29 13:47:00 Plibersek, Tanya, MP 83M Sydney ALP 0 0 Ms PLIBERSEK —I rise to speak on the Crimes Amendment (Bail and Sentencing) Bill 2006. I listened closely to the comments of the member for Stirling. I believe that his intentions are good, but he has made a number of statements which do not really reflect the reality in courts around Australia—in particular, courts that would be affected by this legislation. He has suggested that currently people are not equal before the law because judges have the ability, in certain limited circumstances and if they want to, to take cultural background or customary law into account in sentencing. If the member for Stirling had a look at whether this has been the case—whether judges have taken cultural background and customary law into account in sentencing—I think he would be surprised. He has left the chamber so I suppose he is not really interested in the detail of this legislation. He would have found that it was not the sort of issue that the Attorney-General and the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs like to pretend it is. We are not in the middle of a two-tier legal system, as the member for Stirling was trying to suggest. People are not getting different treatment or different levels of protection because of their cultural background. Sexual assault and domestic violence in some Indigenous communities is a frighteningly widespread issue and as a nation it is incumbent upon us to do something about it. It has been a good thing that in recent months there has been some widespread media coverage of the devastating incidents and the devastating effects that these are having in some communities. What we need is a long-term, well thought through plan that builds on what is working—because there are programs that are working around Australia—and addresses the incidence of violence and assault in some communities. This bill will do absolutely nothing to reduce levels of sexual assault and domestic violence in these communities. The thing that is so disappointing about that is that here we are, the parliament of Australia, with all these resources, information, reports and consultations, and this is the best that the government can come up with—a piece of legislation that will not protect a single child from sexual assault, a piece of legislation that will not protect a single woman from sexual assault or domestic violence. So, what can the aim be? If the aim is not to protect the victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, what can the aim be? Could it possibly be as venal and as base as a few headlines in the Australian? Could it possibly be so? Of course, there is never an excuse for child abuse, sexual assault or domestic violence. They are always crimes and they must be treated as crimes. Policing and the judiciary all have a part to play in reducing and eventually eliminating violence against and sexual abuse of women and children but they are not the whole answer. They are a very important part of the answer but they are not the full answer. Aboriginal men who rape or bash their wives or children should of course face the full force of the law. There is nobody in this country who argues otherwise, and this legislation is designed to imply that there are people who argue otherwise. The challenge for the government is to take the focus that the media attention has put on these issues and turn it into sustained, positive action that actually addresses the incidence of sexual assault and domestic violence in Aboriginal communities—and, indeed, in communities all around Australia. We must keep reminding ourselves that this is not just something that happens in rural, remote, isolated communities. It is not just something that happens in Aboriginal communities. This bill does nothing to offer a sustained response to domestic violence or sexual assault. It comes from an intergovernmental summit on violence and child abuse in Indigenous communities held in June 2006. It sets out to amend the federal Crimes Act to require the court to consider the potential impact of bail decisions on victims and witnesses, specifically those in remote communities, and to restrict federal judges and magistrates from taking into consideration a person’s cultural background or customary law in sentencing. The member for Stirling implied that judges have to take this into consideration. They do not have to. This bill seeks to take away something that is seldom used. It was said that it is sometimes argued for in court. Plenty of things are argued for. In just about every court case that makes it into the newspapers it seems somebody is arguing that the person is actually innocent. As I said, the bill is in fact a diversion from the main issue that we as a parliament should be tackling—that is, how to reduce the incidence of domestic violence and sexual assault in communities around Australia. We have heard from speakers on both sides of the parliament—members of the government and members of the opposition—in the last week in particular about the importance of having a sustained and long-term approach to reducing violence in Australia. There has been a terrific community campaign, the White Ribbon Day campaign, in which White Ribbon ambassadors, including a number of members on both sides of the parliament, have worn their white ribbons so as to say: ‘As Australian men, we want to see the end of violence against women and children in Australia. We will stand up to be counted. We will say that this is not acceptable. We will say to other men that this is not acceptable.’ We have seen a very positive response from the Australian community. The Australian community recognises that sexual assault, domestic violence and child sexual abuse should not be tolerated. How does the government respond to that? This bill, which is supposed to have some effect on child sexual abuse, domestic violence and sexual assault, diverts attention because there is this supposition that there are a whole lot of people out there arguing that it is okay for them to bash their wives and have sex with children because it is part of their cultural heritage, and it is just not happening in the Australian community. When the Attorney-General was asked to identify where the consideration of customary law or cultural practice has led to inappropriately lenient sentences, his department failed to provide a single case. When he was pressed for the detail of cases known at the time of drafting, the only example that the government could provide related to an unsuccessful attempt to use hunting traditions as a defence for hunting birds that were listed as endangered. Currently, a person’s cultural background is only ever considered in sentencing where the judge says it is relevant. It is often not considered. It may be argued for by the defence and then disregarded by the judge. Honestly, I think this is the kind of thing that we can leave to judges and courts. The idea that the Attorney-General, from the distance of Canberra, is better placed to make these decisions than judges is, in my view, not correct. We are committed to tackling the incredibly difficult issues around sexual abuse and domestic violence involving women and children, but playing politics does not do that. In fact, what we can do, if we start playing politics with these issues, is divert our attention away from finding real solutions. There are real solutions. They are operating in towns and communities around the country. The trouble is that we have bandaid suggestions, short-term pilot programs—the pilot works, then it runs out of money. We have communities around Australia reinventing the wheel. They find a program that works, they run it as a pilot program, it reduces the rate of sexual abuse or domestic violence in a community and then the funding is withdrawn from the program and they have to start all over again with a new funding stream in a few years time. Or they keep their funding but their program is so little known outside their community that communities all around Australia are reinventing the wheel. That is just not good enough. We need a national response to violence against women and children. We need a national plan that has all the stakeholders involved—police, the judiciary, and survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and child sexual assault. All of those stakeholders should be at the table. We need that group to report to cabinet about what is working, where it is working and, if it is not working, why not. What are we doing wrong? We need a national council to direct the work of that national plan. We need real and long-term support for the programs that work. We do not want a piecemeal approach. We do not want an approach that is based on glossy advertising campaigns that ramp up around election time to make it look like the government is interested in doing something about sexual assault and domestic violence. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission put out an excellent research paper about violence in Aboriginal communities in which they set out 10 challenges for dealing with violence in those communities. They talked about the importance of a holistic approach rather than an approach that deals only with law and order. Law and order is important but it is not the only answer. They say that government has consulted and had reports till the cows have come home. We now know enough; we actually have to commit to doing the work. HREOC stressed that genuine partnership and full participation of Indigenous people are absolutely vital if programs are going to work. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! It being 2 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 97. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed. 32 CONDOLENCES 32 32 14:00:00 SPEAKER, The 10000 PO N/A 1 0 The SPEAKER inform the House of the death on Sunday, 19 November 2006 of Mr Norman Kenneth Foster OAM, a member of this House for the division of Sturt from 1969 to 1972. As a mark of respect to the memory of Norman Foster I invite honourable members to rise in their places. Honourable members having stood in their places— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —I thank the House. 32 14:00:00 Questions Without Notice 32 32 14:01:00 Beazley, Kim, MP PE4 Brand ALP 0 Mr BEAZLEY —My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to these five volumes of the Cole report and the 2,065 pages of corruption that occurred under his nose. Prime Minister, why are you so proud of yourself for being incompetent and not criminal? 32 Howard, John, MP ZD4 Bennelong LP Prime Minister 1 Mr HOWARD —I am proud to lead a government that had the courage to have a full inquiry—the only government in the Western world that had the courage to do this, the only government in the Western world that responded in a very comprehensive fashion. I would say to the Leader of the Opposition that I commend to him a reading of the report. I commend to the Leader of the Opposition some understanding of the findings of Mr Cole, and those findings indicate that all the allegations he so falsely made against the honour and the integrity of the foreign minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have been demonstrated to be completely wrong. 32 32 14:02:00 Wood, Jason, MP E0F La Trobe LP 1 Mr WOOD —My question is also addressed to the Prime Minister. Has the Prime Minister seen reports that hundreds of Victorian schools may close due to the ACTU’s National Day of Action this Thursday, with many parents forced to take the day off work to care for their children as a result? What is the Prime Minister’s response? 32 Howard, John, MP ZD4 Bennelong LP Prime Minister 1 Mr HOWARD —I have seen reports. For example, the AEU Victorian branch president, Mary Blewett, said that teachers, principals and school staff from across the state would gather in Melbourne on Thursday. They should not be gathering in Melbourne on Thursday; they should be at school on Thursday. They should be looking after the interests of the schoolchildren of Victoria. It is no secret to any member in this House that many Australian parents are voting with their feet against the government education system around the country, and they are not doing it because of funding: it is this kind of behaviour by teachers that gives government schools a bad name. Victoria has the highest percentage of school students enrolled in independent and Catholic schools in the country. This action by Victorian teachers will further reduce the esteem of the government education system in the eyes of Victorian parents. As somebody who is rather proudly the product of a government education system, let me say that I worry about this kind of behaviour undermining the quality of government education in Victoria and around Australia. Instead of attending a rock concert at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, instead of attending a Jimmy Barnes concert at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, these teachers should be in their classrooms. They should be doing what they are paid to do—that is, to teach the children of Victoria. If they want to demonstrate against our laws, they should do it in their own time, not in their children’s time. This is a blow against government schools in Victoria. The fact that all through this answer those opposite have interjected on behalf of the striking teachers demonstrates how much contempt they hold for the government school education system. 00AMR King, Catherine, MP Ms King interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —The member for Ballarat is warned! ZD4 Howard, John, MP Mr HOWARD —Instead of heckling me, they should be encouraging the teachers of Victoria to stay at their post, do their job and look after the schoolchildren of Victoria. 33 33 14:06:00 Rudd, Kevin, MP 83T Griffith ALP 0 Mr RUDD —My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. After 10 years as foreign minister and as the minister responsible under Australian law for enforcing UN sanctions against Iraq, does the minister accept any responsibility whatsoever for his department’s failure to have in place any systems or procedures in relation to how its staff should proceed in response to allegations relating to the breach of sanctions, as concluded in this, Commissioner Cole’s report? 33 Downer, Alexander, MP 4G4 Mayo LP Minister for Foreign Affairs 1 Mr DOWNER —The people responsible for the breach of UN sanctions and for deceiving both my department and the United Nations—not according to the Labor Party, but according to Commissioner Cole—are the executives of AWB Ltd. We condemn, in any circumstances, all of those people—and it happens from time to time—who endeavour to defraud or mislead the Commonwealth in the process of breaking the law. That is why, following the Volcker inquiry, with which we cooperated, we established the Cole inquiry—because we wanted to get to the heart of this matter. As I explained on the radio this morning, we have nailed this by establishing what happened—and it would not have happened if it had not been for an independent inquiry. There are 66 countries and some 2,200 to 2,300 companies referred to in the Volcker report— PG6 Macklin, Jenny, MP Ms Macklin interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —The Deputy Leader of the Opposition is warned! 4G4 Downer, Alexander, MP Mr DOWNER —and we are the only country that has established a report of this kind. The responsibility lies with the people who broke the law, and the government has addressed that. 83T Rudd, Kevin, MP Mr Rudd —Mr Speaker, on relevance: not one word of that was relevant to the question he was asked. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —The minister has completed his answer. 33 33 14:08:00 Baird, Bruce, MP MP6 Cook LP 1 Mr BAIRD —My question is addressed to the Treasurer. Would the Treasurer inform the House of recent data on the Australian economy? What does this indicate about the government’s economic management? 33 Costello, Peter, MP CT4 Higgins LP Treasurer 1 Mr COSTELLO —I thank the honourable member for Cook for his question. I can inform him that Sensis released their business index for the October quarter today, which showed a solid improvement in perceptions of the economy and of the future economic direction, which rose strongly, improving by 14 per cent. The report also found that the federal government is the most supported government by small and medium enterprises in Australia, with a solid positive net rating—as opposed to the Labor state governments, which overwhelmingly have negative ratings by small and medium sized businesses. Of course, that is because Labor governments in all of the states do not care about small businesses. YU5 Tanner, Lindsay, MP Mr Tanner interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! The member for Melbourne is warned! CT4 Costello, Peter, MP Mr COSTELLO —All those state governments care about is militant unionism—the kind of unionism that you are going to see in Melbourne on Thursday and the kind of unionism which is anti small business. It is because Labor cannot stand up to their union controllers that small and medium sized businesses in this country will not accept that the state Labor governments are supportive. In addition to that, Standard and Poor’s released their credit rating today, rating Australia’s sovereign credit at AAA, the highest rating assigned by Standard and Poor’s. Standard and Poor’s noted in their assessment today that Australia has one of the best fiscal positions globally, which is reflected in the net creditor position of the Australian federal government. When this government came to office, we had a net debtor position of $96 billion. That is where the Australian accounts were left by the then Minister for Finance, Mr Beazley. Standard and Poor’s now record that Australia has a net creditor position—that is, we have repaid $96 billion of Labor Party debt—and, as a consequence of that, Australia’s credit rating is now AAA. I hardly need to remind the House that Australia was downgraded twice in its credit rating under the Labor Party. In 1986 we were downgraded to AA plus. In 1989 we were downgraded to AA. It was not until the coalition was elected that, in 1999, we were upgraded to AA plus, and in 2003 we recovered our AAA credit rating. These things were done by the coalition government; they could never have been done by the Labor Party. The Labor Party is the party that lost Australia’s credit rating, and the Liberal and National parties have recovered it through proper economic management—the kind of management which the Labor Party failed to implement. 34 DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 34 14:12:00 SPEAKER, The 10000 PO N/A 1 0 The SPEAKER —I inform the House that we have present in the gallery this afternoon members of the Local Government and Environment Committee from the New Zealand Parliament. On behalf of the House, I extend a very warm welcome to our visitors. Honourable members—Hear, hear! 34 Questions Without Notice 34 34 14:12:00 Rudd, Kevin, MP 83T Griffith ALP 0 Mr RUDD —My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. After 10 years as foreign minister, and as the minister responsible under Australian law for enforcing UN sanctions against Iraq, does the minister accept any responsibility whatsoever for the following damning conclusion contained in Commissioner Cole’s report: The critical fact that emerges is that DFAT did very little in relation to the allegations or other information it received that either specifically related to AWB, or related generally to Iraq’s manipulation of the Programme. DFAT’s response to the information and allegations was limited to seeking AWB’s assurance that it was doing nothing wrong. Minister, having refused to accept any responsibility whatsoever for the other failures referred to in Commissioner Cole’s report, do you accept any responsibility for this failure also identified in Commissioner Cole’s conclusion? 34 Downer, Alexander, MP 4G4 Mayo LP Minister for Foreign Affairs 1 Mr DOWNER —I thank the honourable member for his question. As I made clear, obviously the Cole commission found that AWB endeavoured to mislead the Commonwealth, including the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. That is the first point to understand. Secondly, I encourage honourable members to read the report. The report makes clear, fairly obviously, that this was a United Nations-run program. Mr Cole stated that the United Nations’ acceptance of a contract after examination by UN experts provided a sound basis for the minister or his delegate—in this case it was the delegate—to grant approval for the export. He went on to say that DFAT did look at contracts. According to the Cole report, if the true nature of the arrangements had been disclosed to officers of DFAT, they would have acted differently. I think that is crucially important. The commissioner went on to say that by omitting any clear and accurate reference to the transportation arrangements, AWB effectively deprived DFAT of the opportunity to properly scrutinise and consider the legality of the arrangements actually in place between AWB and IGB. He went on to say that DFAT had been astute to give proper advice when asked regarding the operation of the UN sanctions and the oil— 83T Rudd, Kevin, MP Mr Rudd —Mr Speaker, on a point of order: the question asked whether the minister accepted any responsibility. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —If the member for Griffith wishes to raise a point of order, he will come to straight to his point of order. The minister is in order. I call the minister. 4G4 Downer, Alexander, MP Mr DOWNER —Not only did I say that AWB were responsible for defrauding the Commonwealth but let me ask, by rhetorical response, whether the member for Griffith and the Leader of the Opposition accept any responsibility for the allegations of collusion—the allegations that the government was fully aware of what was going on—for telling the Australian people that and whether that was a reasonable thing, or whether we will ever see the day when the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Griffith appropriately apologise for what they said. 35 DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 35 14:16:00 SPEAKER, The 10000 PO N/A 1 0 The SPEAKER —I inform the House that we have present in the gallery this afternoon members of the Children, Youth and Sports Affairs Committee of the National Assembly of the Republic of Bulgaria. On behalf of the House I extend a very warm welcome to our visitors. Honourable members—Hear, hear! 35 Questions Without Notice 35 35 14:16:00 Forrest, John, MP NV5 Mallee NATS 1 Mr FORREST —My question is addressed to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Transport and Regional Services. Would the Deputy Prime Minister explain to the House how our transport infrastructure is meeting the needs of Australians, including those in my electorate of Mallee? How is the government ensuring that Australia’s future infrastructure needs are met in order to keep our economy strong? 35 Vaile, Mark, MP SU5 Lyne NATS Minister for Transport and Regional Services 1 Mr VAILE —I thank the honourable member for Mallee for his question and recognise his professional interest in investment in infrastructure as an engineer. He has been a great proponent of the Wimmera-Mallee pipeline and of achieving that great investment that is going to deliver some enormous water savings to the nation, particularly to Victoria and the Wimmera-Mallee. There will be annual water savings of 80,000 megalitres when the investment by the Commonwealth is fully implemented, thanks to the hard work of the member for Mallee. He also recognises that the growth of our economy—and I think we are in about the 14th year of expansion—continues to increase pressure on our transport and logistics infrastructure. It is forecast that by 2020 the freight task in Australia will double from what it is today and the needs of the passenger task will grow by 40 per cent. So we have to continue that investment at all levels of our infrastructure to make sure we meet those requirements if we are to ensure the Australian economy will be as strong, as competitive and as efficient then as it is today. Our government is investing, over a five-year period, with AusLink $15 billion in road and rail infrastructure across Australia through all the different categories of roads as well as critical rail corridors, and I mentioned one yesterday. Given that the Australian Local Government Association conference is on here in Canberra this week, it is worth mentioning the Roads to Recovery program. This is a very popular program of local government. It is a very efficient program in terms of the expenditure of taxpayers’ dollars. It is also the program that the Leader of the Opposition once referred to as a boondoggle. I do not think there would be one delegate from the Australian Local Government Association conference who would agree with the Leader of the Opposition in referring to the Roads to Recovery program as a boondoggle. It is a great investment in the road networks across Australia that feed into the major arterial networks across Australia. So we will continue to argue the case for investment in Australia’s transport infrastructure to ensure that we remain competitive, that we remain efficient and that we keep the Australian economy strong. 36 36 14:19:00 Thomson, Kelvin, MP UK6 Wills ALP 0 Mr KELVIN THOMSON —My question is also to the Deputy Prime Minister. I refer the Deputy Prime Minister to the claim by the member for O’Connor that The Nationals knew AWB was engaged in corrupt conduct but did nothing about it. Is the member for O’Connor correct when he says: The dogs have been barking about corruption for years. A number of people who were not Liberals were constantly out in the marketplace saying it was the way you did business in the Middle East and if our side is guilty of anything it is of trusting a mob of agri-politicians all of which have close connections with The National Party. Did the Deputy Prime Minister ignore this corruption because AWB and The Nationals come out of the same kennel? 36 Howard, John, MP ZD4 Bennelong LP Prime Minister 1 Mr HOWARD —Let me say a number of things in reply to the question asked by the member for Wills. Let me say this: in my dealings with the Deputy Prime Minister, the Deputy Leader of the National Party, and all the other men and women of the National Party in this parliament I have found them to be people of total integrity and utterly trustworthy. That has been my experience, and any suggestion made by anybody to the opposite is a suggestion that I totally repudiate. Let me say also in relation to the press reports concerning the remarks made by the member for O’Connor that there is within the community a proper and healthy debate about wheat marketing arrangements, and I intend that debate to be resolved in a way that promotes the interests and the welfare of the wheat growers of this country. I have found over the years that the best friends the wheat growers of Australia have are members of the Liberal Party and members of the National Party not members of the Australian Labor Party. 36 36 14:22:00 Laming, Andrew, MP E0H Bowman LP 1 Mr LAMING —My question is to the Treasurer. Would the Treasurer outline to the House how a new Labor tax on infrastructure would damage business investment and lead to higher prices for consumers across the Australian Capital Territory. Is there any risk of this proposal spreading to consumers right across the country? 36 Costello, Peter, MP CT4 Higgins LP Treasurer 1 Mr COSTELLO —I thank the honourable member for Bowman for his question and I can tell him that— DZS Bowen, Chris, MP Mr Bowen —Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. If I understand the question, it relates to ACT government policy. I draw your attention to page 539 of House of Representatives Practice which states that previous speakers have ruled out of order matters in state parliaments or state matters. I also draw your attention to page 538 of House of Representatives Practice which rules out of order specific questions about the policies of other political parties. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —I thank the member for Prospect. I make the point that the Treasurer was asked the question in relation to governments, not other parties. I believe that the question is very much in order. I call the Treasurer. CT4 Costello, Peter, MP Mr COSTELLO —I was asked about taxes on infrastructure and what they will do to business investment. Obviously, a new tax on infrastructure in this country will discourage new investment in infrastructure. I am very interested in the point of order because the point of order was that I should not be asked about political parties’ policies, which confirms that this is ALP policy—a very instructive point of order. If I may say so, it is not the trap that Janice Crosio would have fallen into in this House. Honourable members interjecting— CT4 Costello, Peter, MP Mr COSTELLO —She pales into insignificance compared to you, Mr Speaker. But a new tax on infrastructure in this country will be an obvious disincentive to investment. And here we are in the ACT, where a new tax is now being proposed on all infrastructure for all utilities including broadband. So we have the Labor Party federally saying they want more investment in broadband, whilst it is Labor policy to tax that new investment if it goes in. And this of course is brought to you by the Stanhopeless government here in the ACT. It is estimated that this new tax on infrastructure will add about $137 a year to consumer bills. I asked the federal Labor Party to dissociate themselves from this tax yesterday and the Canberra Times duly went to the member for Lilley and asked him to condemn this tax. And, according to the Canberra Times, Mr Swan said he had not seen the proposals and would have to have a look at them. Just so he can have a look at them, I table the letter from all of the telecommunications providers in the ACT to the Stanhope government protesting about this new tax. I also table the letter from Jon Stanhope of 23 November 2006 in which he defends his new tax on infrastructure. He says this: ‘Importantly, having taken into account all of the factors ...’, he is going to proceed. He says, ‘Indeed, the government has been very open in acknowledging that there will be some impact on ACT consumers as a result.’ In other words, he expects this new tax to be fully passed on to consumers. So here we have federal Labor feigning concern about a rise in the consumer price index while state Labor introduce new taxes to be passed directly into the consumer price index. Here we have— 2V5 Swan, Wayne, MP Mr Swan interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! CT4 Costello, Peter, MP Mr COSTELLO —federal Labor saying that what we need is new infrastructure— 2V5 Swan, Wayne, MP Mr Swan interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! The member for Lilley! CT4 Costello, Peter, MP Mr COSTELLO —in this country, whilst we have state Labor taxing new infrastructure in this country. Again, I call on federal Labor; I call on the member for Brand and the member for Lilley, and each and every other one of their small but dwindling faction, to come out and completely dissociate themselves from new taxes on infrastructure. It can be done very easily; it can be done by condemning the Stanhope proposal. 2V5 Swan, Wayne, MP Mr Swan interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! The member for Lilley is warned! CT4 Costello, Peter, MP Mr COSTELLO —It can be done by saying that the Labor Party calls on it to be removed and it can be done by giving a pledge that federal Labor will not be trying to replicate this new tax right around the country. The people of Australia know this: Labor stands for new taxes. 38 38 14:28:00 Fitzgibbon, Joel, MP 8K6 Hunter ALP 0 Mr FITZGIBBON —My question is also to the Treasurer. I refer him to the AWB’s $290 million kickback to the former Iraqi regime, a payment which was claimed as a tax deduction on his watch, and therefore was subsidised by the taxpayer to the tune of some $90 million. Is the Treasurer aware that, despite the fact that the taxation commissioner has now backed Labor’s claim that the tax act is in need of amendment, his Assistant Treasurer rejected Labor’s amendment to align the tax act with the Criminal Code when I moved it in this place on 27 February? Treasurer, will you now adopt Labor’s plan to ensure that no AWB style bribes can be claimed as a tax deduction in the future, or will you continue to support taxpayer subsidies for illegal bribes? 38 Costello, Peter, MP CT4 Higgins LP Treasurer 1 Mr COSTELLO —I thank the honourable member for his question. Of course, he completely misrepresents the Assistant Treasurer, as per usual. I completely repudiate what he said about the Assistant Treasurer. Can I also refer the honourable member to section 26-52 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997, which provides as follows: You cannot deduct under this Act a loss or outgoing you incur that is a *bribe to a foreign public official. It is quite specific. If anybody has attempted to deduct a bribe to a foreign official, it is in breach of section 26-52(1). The Commissioner of Taxation, who enforces the law, has the power to adjust any such tax and to impose penalties and an interest payment in relation to that. The Commissioner of Taxation has full power in relation to this matter. The question, unfortunately, is based on a false premise. I have full confidence in the Commissioner of Taxation to enforce the provisions of the Income Tax Assessment Act. 38 38 14:31:00 Tollner, David, MP 00AN4 Solomon CLP 1 Mr TOLLNER —My question is addressed to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Would the minister update the House on the latest developments in Australia’s relationship with Indonesia? How are our countries working together for mutual benefit? 38 Downer, Alexander, MP 4G4 Mayo LP Minister for Foreign Affairs 1 Mr DOWNER —I thank the honourable member for the question. I also acknowledge the support he gives to the prostate cancer cause, for which I believe he has grown his moustache. My wife is involved in that campaign as well, so I am delighted that he has made an effort. Honourable members interjecting— 4G4 Downer, Alexander, MP Mr DOWNER —I think you misunderstand—not to mislead the House here in any way. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! The minister has the call. 4G4 Downer, Alexander, MP Mr DOWNER —I think they must misunderstand, Mr Speaker. Honourable members interjecting— 4G4 Downer, Alexander, MP Mr DOWNER —I look forward to seeing her tonight! 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! 00AMR King, Catherine, MP Ms King interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —The member for Ballarat will remove herself under standing order 94(a). 83L Gillard, Julia, MP Ms Gillard —Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. From your angle I appreciate you might not have realised this, but the member for Ballarat was in fact talking to me, not interjecting. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —I appreciate the comments of the Manager of Opposition Business, but the Speaker was on his feet and the member for Ballarat continued to speak, and she is therefore removing herself under standing order 94(a). The member for Ballarat then left the chamber. 4G4 Downer, Alexander, MP Mr DOWNER —I am pleased to inform the House that my Indonesian counterpart, Hassan Wirajuda, and I signed the Australia-Indonesia Agreement on the Framework for Security Cooperation, as the Treaty of Lombok is formally called, in Indonesia on 13 November. This is a historic agreement, and it will provide a bedrock for the bilateral relationship between Indonesia and Australia for many years to come. So, even if there are difficulties in that relationship from time to time, we will have this bedrock of the relationship. It will of course provide a framework for dialogue exchanges but will also, importantly, provide for the implementation of joint activities in areas such as law enforcement cooperation, counter-terrorism, defence, maritime security, people trafficking, and emergency management and response. It also includes a clear support by both countries for each other’s territorial integrity. It is an unambiguous statement by both our countries that we will not support the break-up of each other’s countries. Obviously, it is hardly likely that Indonesia would support the break-up of Australia, but the Australian government would not in any circumstances support the break-up of Indonesia. That has been the position of Australian governments for a very long time. This agreement will in no way derogate from domestic laws in our country. Finally, let me make this point: the agreement will be subject to full public parliamentary scrutiny before it is ratified. I have written to the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, which is chaired by the member for Boothby, to advise of my intention to table the agreement in parliament when all the paperwork is completed, which is likely to be during the course of next week. In short, as Dr Wirajuda has said, this agreement reflects the maturity of Australia-Indonesia relations as close neighbours and is an important landmark for the future. I think it will serve future generations of Australians and Indonesians very well by allowing us to work very closely together to deal with the sorts of modern threats which could affect Australians and Indonesians. 39 DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 39 14:36:00 SPEAKER, The 10000 PO N/A 1 0 The SPEAKER —I inform the House that we have present in the gallery this afternoon members of the House of Commons Education and Skills Committee of the United Kingdom. On behalf of the House I extend a very warm welcome to our visitors. Honourable members—Hear, hear! 39 Questions Without Notice 39 39 14:36:00 Beazley, Kim, MP PE4 Brand ALP 0 Mr BEAZLEY —My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. I refer the foreign minister to page 83 of volume 4 of the Cole inquiry’s report, which states: By June 2004 DFAT was aware that AWB’s prices had included ... transportation, that AWB ... paid money to a Jordanian trucking company ... and that AWB had conceded that the Jordanian company might of its own volition have provided kickbacks to the regime. Minister, given that Commissioner Cole has concluded that your department knew these facts by June 2004, why in September 2004 did you direct our acting ambassador in Washington to ‘reject the allegations entirely that the AWB had paid kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime’? Minister, why did you seek to deceive the Americans just prior to our own Australian elections? 40 Downer, Alexander, MP 4G4 Mayo LP Minister for Foreign Affairs 1 Mr DOWNER —I did not in any way seek to deceive the Americans in the first place. In the second place, as is made perfectly clear if you read the whole of the Cole commission report, that report will explain to you the emergence of my knowledge, ministerial knowledge and the department’s knowledge of whether AWB Ltd was paying kickbacks. The fact is that I totally reject the proposition put by the Leader of the Opposition. 40 40 14:38:00 Bartlett, Kerry, MP 0K6 Macquarie LP 1 Mr BARTLETT —My question is addressed to the Minister for Health and Ageing. Would the minister update the House on how the government’s ‘Strengthening Medicare’ package is ensuring that Australians have access to affordable medical services, particularly in my electorate of Macquarie? 40 Abbott, Tony, MP EZ5 Warringah LP Minister for Health and Ageing 1 Mr ABBOTT —I do appreciate the member for Macquarie’s question. I note that the GP bulk-billing rate in his electorate has increased to 79 per cent since the government’s ‘Strengthening Medicare’ measures began. Bulk-billing is certainly not the be-all and end-all of Medicare, but it is important and it should be widely available, particularly for children and pensioners. And that is exactly what has happened, thanks to the policies of the Howard government. In the September quarter, the national GP bulk-billing rate hit 76.9 per cent. That is the 11th successive quarter of bulk-billing increases. It is an increase of more than 10 percentage points since December 2003. The bulk-billing rate for children, at 84.2 per cent, is at an all-time high. The bulk-billing rate for people aged over 65, at 87.1 per cent, is at a 10-year high. The government’s ‘Strengthening Medicare’ package was not just about bulk-billing; it was also about helping people who do not get bulk-billed. That is why we introduced the new Medicare safety net. This year 1½ million Australians will be helped by that safety net. Last year 15,000 people in the electorate of Macquarie were helped by that safety net. But members opposite still want to abolish that safety net. The only party in this parliament that wants to cut health spending is the Australian Labor Party, which wants to abolish the Medicare safety net. Two months ago, the Leader of the Opposition called the safety net flawed and inflationary. No wonder only 24 per cent of the Australian public want him to lead the Australian Labor Party! Last month the member for Lalor called the safety net inflationary and inequitable. No wonder only 27 per cent of the Australian people want her to lead the Labor Party! While Labor agonises between a failed leader and flawed challenges, this government is getting on with delivering better health services to the Australian people and reinforcing its credentials as the best friend that Medicare has ever had. 40 40 14:41:00 O’Connor, Gavan, MP WU5 Corio ALP 0 Mr GAVAN O’CONNOR —My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and it follows the statement of the Prime Minister that the Liberal and National parties are the best friends the wheat growers of Australia have ever had. I refer to the Cole inquiry report which finds, as a result of this $300 million wheat for weapons scandal: AWB wheat grower shareholders have lost half the value of their investment; trade with Iraq worth more than $500 million per annum has been forfeited; AWB is threatened by lawsuits both in Australia and overseas, with potential liabilities running to hundreds of millions of dollars; there are potential further restrictions on AWB’s trade overseas; and AWB has cast a shadow over Australia’s reputation in international trade. As the minister responsible for approving all 41 AWB corrupt contracts with Saddam Hussein’s regime, do you accept any responsibility for the cost to Australia’s hardworking wheat farmers? 41 Downer, Alexander, MP 4G4 Mayo LP Minister for Foreign Affairs 1 Mr DOWNER —My answer to the Australian wheat growers is: as the Prime Minister has said, the Liberal and National Party government is the best friend that the wheat growers have— 00AN3 O’Connor, Brendan, MP Mr Brendan O’Connor interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! The member for Gorton is warned! 4G4 Downer, Alexander, MP Mr DOWNER —and we stand up for wheat growers over and over again. In fact, part of the Labor Party’s narrative was that we turned a blind eye to or we were complicit in illegal activities of AWB because we were standing up for the wheat growers. That used to be the Labor Party’s narrative. DZS Bowen, Chris, MP Mr Bowen interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! The member for Prospect is warned! 4G4 Downer, Alexander, MP Mr DOWNER —That was the argument the Labor Party put for why we apparently thought the kickbacks were okay. 83E Ripoll, Bernie, MP Mr Ripoll interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —And so is the member for Oxley! 4G4 Downer, Alexander, MP Mr DOWNER —The fact is that at least some people in AWB Ltd, on the conclusions of the Cole commission report, may have broken the law. That of course is a matter to be investigated. Charges may or may not be brought; we will just have to wait and see. But AWB Ltd comprehensively misled the United Nations and the Australian government, particularly the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The honourable member is right to ask the question. Their behaviour was disgraceful. We condemn their behaviour in the strongest terms. So vigilant has the government been that it set up a royal commission to examine what AWB Ltd may or may not have done, and the government has very successfully got to the bottom of this matter. 41 41 14:45:00 Gash, Joanna, MP AK6 Gilmore LP 1 Mrs GASH —My question is addressed to the Minister for Education, Science and Training. Minister, what is the government doing to ensure that Australia remains at the forefront of international research? 41 Bishop, Julie, MP 83P Curtin LP Minister for Education, Science and Training and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women’s Issues 1 Ms JULIE BISHOP —I thank the member for Gilmore for her question. I note her deep interest in science and research, particularly in biofuels research—she has the largest ethanol plant in Australia in her electorate. The Howard government is committed to providing our best and brightest researchers with world-class research facilities. Yesterday I announced that half a billion dollars would be invested in world-class infrastructure so that our scientists and researchers can continue to focus their world competitive research in areas of national importance—for example, climate change, biofuels and the development of new drugs and therapies. This will mean that our researchers will have access to state-of-the-art facilities and equipment. It will also assist them in continuing fundamental research in life sciences, environmental sciences and the physical sciences including astronomy, in which we are a world leader. This strategy has been developed over the last 12 months. The research community has come together to collaborate and focus on priorities for research infrastructure in Australia. Some of the projects that will be funded include two pilot projects for biofuels research, a genetic bank for developing better crops for Australian farmers, a system for monitoring our oceans so that we can better predict weather patterns and a national network of medical imaging facilities. Instead of denigrating our scientific organisations, which is the pastime of the Labor Party, the Howard government— 83L Gillard, Julia, MP Ms Gillard interjecting— 83P Bishop, Julie, MP Ms JULIE BISHOP —Oh, yes, you do! ANSTO? Yes, you do. The Howard government is focused on ensuring that our scientists and researchers are supported. In fact, this year the Australian government is investing nearly $6 billion in science and research—that is, the Howard government is focused on ensuring that our scientists and researchers are supported. In fact, this year the Australian government is investing nearly $6 billion in science and research. That is a 56 per cent increase on the funding that Labor put into science and research when they were in office. In the decade from 2001, the Howard government will have invested over $50 billion in science and research in this country. That is the largest investment by any Australian government at any time in our history. 42 42 14:48:00 Thomson, Kelvin, MP UK6 Wills ALP 0 Mr KELVIN THOMSON —My question is to the Prime Minister. Has the Prime Minister heard reports of a party last night at which his coalition colleagues were celebrating the Cole inquiry’s conclusion? Does he endorse the comment by one coalition MP that: In the midst of all this sadness and recrimination, it was a feeling of euphoria that it was over. While Liberals cracked open the bubbly, did the Prime Minister think at all of the Australian soldiers in Iraq and his role in making them less safe? 42 Howard, John, MP ZD4 Bennelong LP Prime Minister 1 Mr HOWARD —I was not aware of any party last night. I am obviously losing my touch because I was not asked. I will tell you what I was doing. Last night I was doing two things. It is interesting that the member for Wills asked me a question about our Defence Force. Last night, I attended a dinner organised by the Minister for Defence in honour of the retiring Secretary to the Department of Defence, Mr Ric Smith. I take this opportunity—given to me by the member for Wills—of placing on record my profound gratitude to Mr Smith for the faithful way in which he has served the Commonwealth of Australia and governments of both political persuasions in a number of positions. I first seriously encountered him when he was— Opposition members interjecting— ZD4 Howard, John, MP Mr HOWARD —You asked me a question about last night. I will give you an answer about last night. I first encountered Mr Smith when he was the Australian ambassador in Beijing when I visited that capital in 1997. He did an outstanding job in looking after the interests of Australia in the wake of the Bali attack when he was the ambassador in Jakarta and over the past three and a bit years he has served very effectively as the Secretary to the Department of Defence. I do not know whether there were any other parties going on, but after that, I went off to address a magnificent group of small business men and women, the pharmacists of Australia. The pharmacists of Australia have no better friend than the Howard government. I made that very plain to them last night. As for our troops overseas, I would hope that it was the bipartisan concern that our troops overseas would always be respected, would always be supported and would always be honoured irrespective of who was in power. I have to say that that cheap attempt by the member for Wills to suggest that in some way some of my colleagues were less than supportive of the troops overseas is absolutely contemptible. 42 42 14:51:00 Lindsay, Peter, MP HK6 Herbert LP 1 Mr LINDSAY —My question is addressed to the Minister for Trade. Would the minister advise the House of recent developments in the government’s trade relations with Australia’s neighbours in the Asia-Pacific? 43 Truss, Warren, MP GT4 Wide Bay NATS Minister for Trade 1 Mr TRUSS —I thank the honourable member for Herbert for the question. I recognise the important role that his electorate has in trade with the Asia-Pacific. It is a key setting point for many of our trading activities and has very close links with many of the countries of the Asia-Pacific. We have in the parliament this afternoon and this evening a number of business leaders from Australia who were involved in the Asia-Pacific region. The APEC Business Forum focuses particularly on our business associations with that region. It is on the hard work of the business of Australia that our trading relationship has grown so strongly over recent times. In 2005 our trade with APEC nations hit $250 billion for the first time. So it is a very significant part of our relationship. The report on trade that will be released later today shows that this figure results from an 18 per cent increase in our exports to APEC’s 21 members and a 10 per cent increase in imports from those countries. APEC’s goods and services trade has grown particularly strongly with Japan, China and Korea but there have also been increases to Singapore, Chinese Taipei and Thailand. It is of interest to note that eight out of 10 of Australia’s top trading partners are in the APEC economies, and they account for 70 per cent of our trade to the world. So the APEC ministerial meeting and leaders meeting in Hanoi were particularly important in asserting a new agenda to look more closely at the way in which we can develop that trading relationship. It is clear that the future regional architecture will play a significant role in determining how we can build that trade. One of the key activities that Australia, as host for APEC next year, will be undertaking is exploring ways in which that trading relationship can grow stronger. We look forward to building on this $250 billion trading relationship in the years ahead. 43 43 14:54:00 Beazley, Kim, MP PE4 Brand ALP 0 Mr BEAZLEY —My question is to the Prime Minister. Has the Prime Minister seen comments by decorated veteran SAS major and Iraq veteran Peter Tinley, who described the $300 million wheat for weapons scandal as ‘an absolute rort on the Australian Defence Force—the people that actually went into western Iraq and did all the work that was required and asked of them from this government’? When the Prime Minister let Australian money buy Saddam’s bullets, why didn’t he think of those who the bullets were being fired at—Peter Tinley and his mates in our armed forces? 43 Howard, John, MP ZD4 Bennelong LP Prime Minister 1 Mr HOWARD —The claim made in the question by the Leader of the Opposition that the government let Australian money buy Saddam’s bullets is quite untrue, and it has been demonstrated to be untrue. I know it has been the mantra of the Labor Party, and I know the Labor Party is intensely disappointed that Mr Cole did not find as the Labor Party wanted Mr Cole to find, but that claim is absolutely false. It has been demonstrated to be false by the findings of the Cole inquiry. If the advice of those opposite—more of others than of the Leader of the Opposition, and I at least concede that the Leader of the Opposition was a fence-sitter inside the Labor Party when it came— PE4 Beazley, Kim, MP Mr Beazley —Rubbish! ZD4 Howard, John, MP Mr HOWARD —It is not rubbish at all. He is on the record as having said that every foreign ministry and defence department in the world believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. As for his erstwhile friend, the member for Griffith— PE4 Beazley, Kim, MP Mr Beazley interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! The Leader of the Opposition! ZD4 Howard, John, MP Mr HOWARD —He said it as an empirical fact. He said, ‘Don’t believe the intelligence; believe what the scientists have to say about it.’ So let me say, as I said yesterday, that the former officer is entitled, as is any Australian, to have his views about the Iraq war, but the claim made by the Leader of the Opposition that in some way we allowed our money to buy Saddam’s bullets is not only a slur on the government and a slur on many people associated with the government but it has been proved totally wrong, a complete falsehood, by the findings of the commissioner. 44 44 14:56:00 Broadbent, Russell, MP MT4 McMillan LP 1 Mr BROADBENT —Mr Speaker, as I sat, alone and forlorn, in my office last night— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —The member for McMillan will come to his question. MT4 Broadbent, Russell, MP Mr BROADBENT —I got this question for the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources. Would the minister update the House on practical government initiatives to lower Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions? 44 Macfarlane, Ian, MP WN6 Groom LP Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources 1 Mr IAN MACFARLANE —I acknowledge the hard work and support of the member for McMillan on our policies in relation to lowering greenhouse gas emissions. When it comes to practical measures and real results, there is no better example of those policies than the Low Emission Technology Demonstration Fund. Through this fund the federal government is now supporting five cutting-edge low-emission projects to the tune of $310 million. These projects cover a suite of technologies, from clean coal technology to renewable energy to coal seam methane—projects worth some $2 billion. On Friday, the Minister for the Environment and Heritage announced that the government would be supporting the world’s largest CO sequestration project. At its peak, this Gorgon project will be burying some three million tonnes per annum of CO every year off the coast of Western Australia. When this suite of technologies, demonstrated by the five projects, achieves its full potential, it is estimated that they could reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by around 50 million tonnes per year from 2030—real projects, real outcomes, which is a stark contrast to the policies of the Labor Party. While I am talking about the Labor Party, I noticed an article in the Australian recently, notable for some words in it—‘effectively dead’, ‘irrelevant’, ‘ineffective’, ‘mostly symbolic’. The member for Griffith should not be smiling. I am not talking about the Leader of the Opposition; I am talking about a policy which he holds very dear—the Kyoto protocol. The article went on to say: ... no-one now believes the treaty has the remotest chance of driving the reforms needed to make the withering cuts in emissions required ... No-one believes it except the Leader of the Opposition and the Labor Party, who cling to an outdated, last-century policy while they ignore the opportunity to debate the potential of nuclear energy. They live in the past and they ignore practical solutions—unlike this government, which continues to deliver measures that lower greenhouse gases. 44 44 15:00:00 Beazley, Kim, MP PE4 Brand ALP 0 Mr BEAZLEY —Mr Speaker, my question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, how do you sleep at night after your neglect— Government members interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! Members on my right. PE4 Beazley, Kim, MP Mr BEAZLEY —meant that Australian money bought the bullets fired at our brave soldiers on your incompetent watch? Government members interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! Members on my right! The Leader of the Opposition will repeat his question. PE4 Beazley, Kim, MP Mr BEAZLEY —That was the question, Mr Speaker, and he heard it. ZD4 Howard, John, MP Mr Howard —No, I didn’t. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —I ask the Leader of the Opposition to repeat his question. PE4 Beazley, Kim, MP Mr BEAZLEY —Prime Minister, how do you sleep at night after your neglect meant Australian money bought the bullets fired at our brave soldiers on your incompetent watch? 45 Howard, John, MP ZD4 Bennelong LP Prime Minister 1 Mr HOWARD —Like any other person who holds high office, there are occasions when I do not sleep as well as I might otherwise because there are things on my mind. That is a perfectly normal thing, and I thank the Leader of the Opposition for asking me the question. In relation to the war in Iraq, the House is aware that the positions of the government and the opposition on this issue have been very different. I have pointed out in the last couple of days, and this question gives me an opportunity to point out again, that the Leader of the Opposition was less than enthusiastic in his endorsement of the Labor Party’s position three years ago. He was not on the front bench. He believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and three years ago he was a classic fence sitter. It is now opportunistic for him to parade his credentials as having always been a devoted opponent. 83L Gillard, Julia, MP Ms Gillard interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! The member for Lalor is warned! ZD4 Howard, John, MP Mr HOWARD —He claims that in some way this government connived, allowed and was neglectful, which led to bullets being purchased with Australian money. I would remind the Leader of the Opposition that it was not Australian money— WF6 Danby, Michael, MP Mr Danby interjecting— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! The member for Melbourne Ports is warned. ZD4 Howard, John, MP Mr HOWARD —but it was money that came out of the escrow account of the United Nations. It was money that ultimately belonged to the people of Iraq. It was not Australian money. So much is the Leader of the Opposition not on top of the facts of this debate that he even makes that fundamental mistake. As the Leader of the Opposition in a confected display of indignity winds himself up for yet another censure motion, the allegation made by the Leader of the Opposition that we turned a blind eye and allowed bullets to be purchased that might have been used against Australian soldiers is a contemptible claim. Even the opposition leader, in his embattled status, knows that that is a contemptible claim. 45 CENSURE MOTION 45 CENSURE MOTION 45 CENSURE MOTION 45 45 15:03:00 Beazley, Kim, MP PE4 Brand ALP Leader of the Opposition 0 0 Mr BEAZLEY —by leave—I move: That this House censure the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Foreign Affairs for: its negligence in failing to act on the 35 warnings it received over a five year period thereby allowing this $300 million wheat for weapons scandal to occur; for its attempted cover-up of this scandal through its attempts to shut down a US Senate inquiry into AWB in 2004; its reluctance to cooperate with the Volcker Inquiry; and its failure to provide the Cole Inquiry with powers to determine whether or not Ministers did their job in enforcing UN sanctions against Iraq; for the cost that has been borne by Australia’s hardworking wheat farmers because of this Government’s negligence—farmers who have now seen half a billion dollars of their Iraqi wheat market lost; for allowing $300 million to be funnelled from AWB to Saddam Hussein’s regime which the Iraqi dictator used to buy guns, bombs and bullets for later use against Australian and coalition troops; and for the damage inflicted on Australia’s international reputation because this Government’s negligence turned Australia into the world’s single biggest violator of UN sanctions against Iraq. There are five volumes here of absolute infamy—2,065 pages. Sometimes in politics it is not easy to see the wood for the trees. When you look at this—volume after volume of one piece of chicanery after another by AWB’s rorting the UN sanctions regime, effectively funding Saddam Hussein over a five-year period, on a matter at the very core of Australian foreign policy—you have to ask yourself a fundamental question about the competence of this government and the slipshod public standards represented by this government’s culpable negligence on this issue, about which it received 35 warnings and chose not to investigate. Even though this commission of inquiry did not have the authority to go after that negligence through the terms of reference that were put down, it nevertheless did point out, as it slightly strayed from the path set by the government, the failure of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to even remotely understand what would be regarded as a reasonable interpretation of its role and authority in monitoring those contracts it was ticking off. That ought to at least cause the Minister for Foreign Affairs to step aside if the man had any sense of honour at all. The fact remains, irrespective of whether or not it was being lied to by the AWB, that 41 contracts were signed off by this foreign minister. These are contracts with consequences. The Prime Minister, in his extraordinary answer to my last question said, ‘Well, it’s not really Australian money—ha ha!—it’s money from an escrow account in the UN,’ as though that excuses them. It is so typical of the trickiness with which they have addressed every single element of this crime—tricky in their terms of reference and tricky when it comes to the claim that it is Australian money that went to supply those bullets, ‘Oh no, it was not Australian money.’ It was UN money let loose by your negligence. That is what it was, and it has consequences. Let me tell you, Prime Minister, how Saddam Hussein used the money that he got—and remember that our negligence was the single biggest contributor to his poultice of illegal money that supported his activities. Saddam, as a result of our actions, was able to maintain the Scud missile launchers for which the SAS were asked to risk their lives to destroy. He was able to maintain the Iraqi soldiers in machine-gun-mounted four-wheel drives that the SAS fought running battles with early in the war. He was able to maintain a good proportion of the 50 aircraft that the Australian Special Forces Group captured at Al Asad air base west of Baghdad. He was able to maintain the sea mines which RAN boarding parties risked their lives to neutralise before they were deployed from tugboats to destroy coalition shipping. He was able to maintain the tanks, trucks, artillery bunkers and logistical support which RAAF Hornet pilots risked their lives to destroy in strike and close air support missions. It would be entirely unsurprising to me if some of that money were still being used to maintain the insurgency which continues to threaten our troops on a daily basis with IEDs, antitank missiles, suicide bombers and small arms. Somebody pays the price. A lot of Iraqis have paid the price, but Australian soldiers pay the price for this sort of negligence. While this government presided over the utter failure of the relevant departments to properly inquire into what AWB was doing over a five-year period, other Australian service personnel were putting their lives on the line. I have only gone through that which was confronted immediately by service personnel in the Iraq war and now, but before then there were Australian warships operating in the Gulf with the explicit charter to enforce and uphold sanctions. They asked questions, they stopped the boats and they inspected the innards of those boats. They did not ask a question of the captain, ‘Are you smuggling anything, old chap?’ and when the captain replied, ‘Oh no, I’m not smuggling something,’ they did not turn away. They boarded the ships and they went into the holds—night after night after night. That is what the armed services do when they are instructed to do something by the government. They do not just ask a series of vapid questions and, because the questions are being directed to their mates in the National Party, not bother to follow up on them; they actually go into the ships that they are inspecting. It is not surprising to me, therefore, that a man so closely connected with the events which were set loose by this government in Major Tinley should now feel, as he looks at the rort of the AWB operation, like saying something like this—an absolute rort on the Australian Defence Force, on the people who actually went into western Iraq and did all the work that was required and asked of them by this government. Actually, it was worse than a rort; it endangered them. What was done by this government endangered them. There has been an obscene celebration around the government benches that the government’s rorted terms of reference produced the only outcome that they could produce, and that was that its culpable negligence was never subject by this commission of inquiry to any serious investigation because it could not be. The government says there is no evidence that it did anything wrong but, frankly, as you go through the five volumes, the 2,065 pages, there is no evidence that the government did anything right. It says there is no evidence that it did anything wrong, but in those 2,065 pages there is not one word that says the government did anything right—that it ever made the serious detailed inquiries or that it ever did the political equivalent of what our naval personnel did day after day of enforcing their end of the sanctions regime in the Persian Gulf. There was hard action by the military, risky action by the military, diligent action by the military, and complete and utter compliance by this government in the things that were being done. Those in the government have been very boastful in their statements to us over the last couple of days. There is not the slightest suspicion on the part of the member for Griffith or me that there was ever going to be a decision reached by this inquiry that would find these folk culpable of anything, because we understood from the outset that it was set up that way. That was obvious to us after correspondence between the member for Griffith and the Cole commission. It is no particular revelation to us. There is no overwhelming disappointment on our part for the fact that no responsibility has been accepted by the Prime Minister or by any of his ministerial colleagues. There is disappointment, however, on behalf of the Australian people. Let me go to one of the editorials that has been produced today on the performance by our government in the Cole commission of inquiry. I will go through these in some detail a little later. Mr Speaker, you will recollect in this chamber—and we had it here again today—the constant calls from the government for an apology, of all things, from me and the member for Griffith to the ministers who are the perpetrators of this negligence. I will go to the last paragraph of the editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald today: ‘I don’t expect it will happen, but Mr Downer and Mr Vaile are owed apologies by Mr Beazley and Mr Rudd,’ Mr Howard said yesterday, citing his political opponents’ pursuit of his ministers over the AWB scandal. On the contrary, Prime Minister, it is the Australian people who are owed the apology. Your ministers, who have so signally failed to manage their portfolios, should make it. Indeed they should. I have not seen such unanimity by editorial writers on the culpability of this government. Every one of the editorial writers in the major daily newspapers today has picked up on the obvious fact that this government has dodged a bullet largely by its own manipulation, not by the fact that its conduct was inspected and regarded as adequate by an appropriate authority. You can see that in the headlines. The Age said: The Federal Government says it has been exonerated by the Cole report. Questions, however, remain on its responsibilities. The Herald Sun editorial is entitled ‘A case of incompetence’, and it starts with quite a nice quote from the Prime Minister from October 2005 in which he said: ‘My dealings with the people in AWB ... (they’ve) always been a very straight up and down group of people.’ Then we have the editorial in today’s Financial Review entitled, ‘Matter of shame and competence.’ The Canberra Times editorial is entitled, ‘PM’s wheat-wash not white enough’. In the Australian we see: Cole shows depth of AWB deceit. AWB’s double dealings in Iraq have cost Australia dearly and politicians must share some of the blame. They shared an awful lot more of it when you go into the detail of that. ‘No excuses for funding a villain’, said the Daily Telegraph. The Sydney Morning Herald article that I quoted from earlier said, ‘Government still not off the hook.’ They are very bored with this analysis of their activities; nevertheless, they stand condemned. This Prime Minister and his ministers say that it is simply not their fault. They will not take responsibility. He never takes responsibility for himself. He never pays the price for his incompetence. Alexander Downer and Mark Vaile do not pay the price. Who pays the price? Australians pay the price: not just our young heroes in Iraq facing insurgents armed by AWB’s bribes; Australia’s hardworking wheat growers have paid the price. AWB is threatened by lawsuits both in Australia and overseas. There are potential further restrictions on AWB’s trade overseas, and trade with Iraq worth more than $500 million a year has been lost. AWB shareholders have lost half the value of their investment. How did that happen? What are the shattering facts? Firstly, Australia’s monopoly wheat exporter bribed the Saddam regime to buy Australian wheat. As I said, this is no ordinary scandal. Domestic laws were broken, international obligations were ignored and there were hundreds of millions in bribes, and topless photos to boot. It took special people to manage this. You see, Prime Minister, this was the National Party on tour. You can just see the emails home: ‘Send lawyers, guns and money.’ Lying with lawyers, playing with guns and bribing with millions! They thought they could get away with anything because they knew the government did not want to know. That is the nasty little secret here, Prime Minister: the essential connection between the people who were running AWB and your ministers and the government. The people in AWB knew the government did not want to know. They thought it was ‘mates’ rules’: what goes on tour stays on tour. The departments of Alexander Downer and Mark Vaile— 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! I am reluctant to interrupt, but would the Leader of the Opposition refer to ministers. PE4 Beazley, Kim, MP Mr BEAZLEY —The departments of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the then Minister for Trade, the Deputy Prime Minister, approved the contracts that contained the bribes. What was the AWB executive supposed to think about the state of the government’s mind while all this was going on? They had had 35 warnings, and occasionally they were confronted by Foreign Affairs officials who had been tipped off to those warnings and asked the questions, to which AWB answered: ‘No, we’re not doing anything.’ You know: ‘There’s no gambling going on here, Sir! Nothing is happening here.’ Was there a further question then? No. There was no further question. What do you think they thought from all of that? What they thought, of course, was that they were approved. We are not dealing here with some sort of group of spivs, hanging about overseas in the bars of downtown Hong Kong, downtown Shanghai or wherever. What we are dealing with are people who are senior in the councils of at least one of the political parties that make up this coalition; people who have been candidates for the National Party in federal elections; people who have sat on the executive of the National Party, at both the state and federal levels; people who stand well with the government; people who are intimate with the details of how this country is governed; people who are intimate with the details of how ministers relate to each other and how departments through those ministers officiate over their affairs. In AWB we are dealing with a body in which a large number of members of the government are shareholders, in which many farmers in this country who support different elements of the government are shareholders. We are dealing with AWB, with the heart and soul of the National Party—one of the bodies that make up this coalition government, one which the Liberal Party never dares confront and allows to go on in their own sweet way, doing whatever it is that they please. That is how this scandal started. This Prime Minister, the trickiest we have seen in that position in this country for a very lengthy period of time, knows how to dodge between the raindrops as he avoids any form of obligation and any form of blame in relation to this matter. What is his defence now? What is his defence reduced to? What is his default position explaining what it is they are up to? The Prime Minister says to us: ‘We are not criminal. We are just incompetent. Our ministers are not criminals; they are just incompetent.’ Either way, these ministers should have resigned months ago and must resign now. If they do not, the Prime Minister should sack them or sack himself. Understand this: the government were warned 35 times. In 1998, they were warned by our intelligence community; in 1999, they were warned by the Canadians; in 2000, they were warned by the United Nations; in 2001, they were warned by the New York Times; in 2002, they were warned by Australian grain merchants; in 2003, they were warned by the United States; in 2004, they were warned by the Australian Defence Force; and, in 2005, they were warned by AWB itself but they did not want to know the truth. Before, during and after the Iraq war and even when the Volcker inquiry was underway, the Howard government did nothing to stop hundreds of millions of dollars flowing to the Saddam regime. It did nothing to uphold the sanctions against Saddam. It did nothing to prevent funding of suicide bombers and regime forces. It did nothing to protect the reputation of Australia’s hardworking wheat growers. It did nothing to protect the future of the single desk. Howard, Downer and Vaile—the three wise monkeys—saw nothing, heard nothing, said nothing. Those three ministers so resemble those three wise monkeys—hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. You could not want a better simile for the government’s behaviour in this very sorry scandal. They did nothing. They let Australia down. They betrayed their ministerial oaths. They betrayed what the Australian people expected of them, which is that they would diligently administer their departments and ensure that the Australian national interest was protected at all times. The thing that I find most unforgivable is that their behaviour is at odds with and is a total betrayal of our armed forces, whom they committed to battle and committed to upholding the sanctions regime with a diligence which they never displayed but should have emulated. They should be censured. (Time expired) 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Is the motion seconded? 83T Rudd, Kevin, MP Mr Rudd —I second the motion and reserve my right to speak. 50 15:23:00 Howard, John, MP ZD4 Bennelong LP Prime Minister 1 0 Mr HOWARD —Rather predictably, the Leader of the Opposition has moved a censure motion. The fact that he spent almost 10 minutes quoting from editorials was message enough to me that there was very little of substance in the motion that he brought before the parliament. But let me give it the seriousness that a censure motion against a Prime Minister and a government deserves and deal with the substance of the allegation made by the Leader of the Opposition. The substance of that allegation was that the government deliberately or through conduct equal to deliberation turned a blind eye to what was going on, that it did not want to know what was going on and, therefore, until confronted with irrefutable evidence that something was wrong, it preferred not to know anything about the allegations that were made in relation to AWB. The other allegation made by the Leader of the Opposition is that the government deliberately organised terms of reference that would prevent the commissioner making an adverse finding against me or against any of my ministers. I want to deal in the time available to me with those two claims, because they are the only claims of substance that have been made. Let me deal first of all with the claim that in some way we manipulated the terms of reference. That is a claim which I emphatically reject. In emphatically rejecting it, I draw on no greater authority than that of Commissioner Cole himself. On 3 February this year, Commissioner Cole issued a lengthy statement amidst claims that in some way the terms of reference were too restrictive. Amongst other things, what he had to say is very pertinent to the claim raised by the Leader of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition is asking the parliament to censure the government inter alia because we rorted the terms of reference. This is what Commissioner Cole had to say: That means that this inquiry will address and make findings regarding at least the following: (a) the role of DFAT in the process of obtaining United Nations approval of AWB wheat contracts within the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme; (b) the knowledge of DFAT in relation to such contracts; (c) what AWB told the Commonwealth, and in particular DFAT, relating to the Iraqi wheat contracts; and (d) whether the Commonwealth, and in particular DFAT, was informed of any knowledge AWB may be found to have had, regarding payments made by AWB to Alia. In other words, Mr Cole was saying that, under the terms of reference given to him by the government, he would examine in full every aspect of DFAT’s behaviour in this whole matter. There was no restriction. He said he would look at everything that DFAT did— 4G4 Downer, Alexander, MP Mr Downer —And he did. ZD4 Howard, John, MP Mr HOWARD —And he did, as the foreign minister rightly interjects. For almost a year, vast resources of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade were devoted to meeting the requirements of this commission. There are many people on both sides of politics who know and respect the legal reputation of Mr Cole. Even the Leader of the Opposition acknowledges that he is a person of ability and somebody with great forensic skills. Mr Cole would be the last man in Australia to leave a stone unturned in doing his duty by the Australian people. His reputation is involved in this, as well as the reputation of ministers and—I put it to the parliament—the reputation of the two men who are sitting opposite me on the opposition front benches. All of our reputations are involved in this. The last thing Mr Cole was going to do was be involved in any kind of slipshod work or any kind of cover-up. He asked all the questions and, in the end, he required my appearance, the appearance of the foreign minister and the appearance of the Deputy Prime Minister. It is a serious issue to go to a commission of inquiry as Prime Minister or minister and give evidence under oath. It is something you take seriously. You do your homework. You make sure that everything you say is absolutely correct. Yet, after all of that examination and after having looked at everything that DFAT had done—and DFAT was the operative department—and after having looked at everything that my colleagues had done, he said that there was absolutely no evidence of any wrongdoing. That is the reality of this situation. I know this commission of inquiry report is an intense disappointment to those who sit opposite. After all, you have accused me and my colleagues of lying, you have accused us of covering up and you have accused us of corruption. There is no mucking about: they accused us of dishonesty, of a cover-up and of corruption. Those are pretty serious charges. I have made some serious allegations in this parliament in 32 years, but I have normally had a bit more evidence before I have made charges of that degree of seriousness against people who have tried to do the right thing according to their own political philosophy. A bit of strong political combat is fair enough, but the Leader of the Opposition wound himself up in confected outrage and said that the Minister for Foreign Affairs was corrupt, that I was corrupt and that the Deputy Prime Minister was corrupt. He might say we are wrong, he might say we are misguided, he might say we are foolish, he might say we are invincibly ignorant, but in making those kinds of allegations without a skerrick of evidence—not a scintilla of evidence, to borrow a phrase from an earlier inquiry—he engaged in a farrago of falsehoods, to borrow a phrase from yet another earlier inquiry, in relation to the behaviour of me and my ministers. It gets worse than that for the Leader of the Opposition. In paragraph 14 of his landmark statement—and it is a landmark statement in the saga of this inquiry—Mr Cole said: Accordingly, if, during the course of my inquiry, it appears to me that there might have been a breach of any Commonwealth, State or Territory law by the Commonwealth or any officer— and for ‘officer’ read ‘including minister’— of the Commonwealth related to the subject matter of the terms of reference, I will approach the Attorney-General seeking a widening of the terms of reference to permit me to make such a finding. He did not seek a widening of the terms of reference. Because, despite the 76 days of hearings, despite the millions of words, the thousands upon thousands of documents, the numerous statements, the numerous interviews—despite all of that—there was no evidence that we had broken the law. Isn’t there something rather odd? Here you have somebody accusing us of corruption, of dishonesty, of lying, of gross negligence, of all of these other things, yet the commissioner does not ask for an extension of the terms of reference. The truth is that this was an inquiry of remarkable transparency. I would remind the parliament that a decision was taken to establish this inquiry within days of the government receiving the Volcker report. We are the only government around the world that has had an inquiry of this nature. We knew when we established this inquiry that it would go on for a long time. We accepted that at the end of day it might require the appearance of me and of ministers. And we know that, in relation to all of these inquiries, where it ultimately runs to, you know not. We were prepared to accept the consequences of that not because we wanted to cover up but in the name of transparency. In this entire debate I think the most baseless charge from the opposition is that we have engaged in a cover-up. If we had wanted to cover up, do you know what we would have done? We would have sent this off to some kind of investigation by the Australian Federal Police—not that they would not do their job correctly, but knowing full well that they would not have the inquisitorial power or tribunal in order to get to the bottom of this. What blew AWB open was the fact that the commission could subpoena the production of documents. Once they got inside AWB, the game was up. They got inside AWB and they found the documentary trail of deception and deceit. That is what blew the lid off this. Unless you had had an inquiry with the powers of a royal commission, that would never have happened. Let me say to the Leader of the Opposition and to the member for Griffith that if we had wanted to cover up we would never have had an inquiry. I knew from day one that, if you had an inquiry with the powers of a royal commissioner, that royal commissioner would demand the production of documents. Once you have got your hands on the documents, you have got your hands on the truth and on the real story. I knew that was going to happen, but I wanted the real story to come out. I wanted to know what had happened, because I had believed that this company had been a reputable company. I had believed that—I do not mind admitting it—and so had many of my colleagues. I remember very vividly early in 2005 that, when I was presented with advice from my department and from the Australian consul-general in New York that AWB was being less than cooperative in relation to the Volcker inquiry, alarm bells started to ring. I wrote on the minute: ‘There must be complete transparency and cooperation.’ For the first time I began to entertain a real belief that this company had behaved improperly. I cannot deny that prior to that I made certain remarks about it. Indeed, as Cole himself has found, one of the reasons why the company was able to get away with what it did was its pattern of deceit built upon a reputation for integrity and trust. With all of this nonsense about a cover-up, you have only to sit for a moment and understand the way an inquiry of this nature operates and the powers it has to realise that once we established that inquiry we were bound to see the whole thing busted open. If you had wanted to have a cover-up, you would never have had an inquiry. We would have been like every other government around the world—I am not saying they are covering up—in not having an inquiry. So this pathetic, confected attempt by the Leader of the Opposition to suggest that in some way it is a betrayal of our armed forces, it is a betrayal of this and it is a betrayal of that is not supported by any of the evidence that has been put forward. The greatest evidence of our bona fides was the establishment of the inquiry. Once you establish inquiries such as this, you know not where it will ultimately lead. That is precisely what had happened. It went down every path available to it. PE4 Beazley, Kim, MP Mr Beazley interjecting— ZD4 Howard, John, MP Mr HOWARD —The Leader of the Opposition, as usual, is constantly yabbering across the table here. The Leader of the Opposition spent almost 10 minutes quoting from editorials in newspapers, because there was absolutely no substance in the censure motion that he brought against us. The Leader of the Opposition is very disappointed by the commission’s report and so is the member for Griffith, because they had built an elaborate attack on the reputation of my government based on the evidence relating to AWB. I am very proud that this government did the right thing in establishing this inquiry, and I will yield to nobody in this parliament in relation to issues relating to a willingness to have a transparent investigation where matters ought to be fully investigated. PE4 Beazley, Kim, MP Mr Beazley interjecting— ZD4 Howard, John, MP Mr HOWARD —The Leader of the Opposition may interject as often as he likes, but nothing can alter the fact that the day we decided to give the powers of a royal commissioner to Mr Cole was the day we set up the circumstances where we got to the bottom of what really happened. The power of Mr Cole to demand the production of documents was the key to finding out what really happened. I reject the censure motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition. I take this opportunity to place on record my total support for and confidence in the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, both of whose reputations have been unreasonably traduced by the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Griffith. Attack them for what they believe in, but do not baselessly attack their integrity! (Time expired) 53 15:38:00 Rudd, Kevin, MP 83T Griffith ALP 0 0 Mr RUDD —This parliament on many occasions has seen this Prime Minister full of self-righteousness, full of mock indignation, full of arrogance and full of self-satisfaction, but on the key question of answering the charge which has been put to him today—which is that this government was negligent in its discharge of its national security responsibilities—we have had not a single answer. In response to the substantive charge that this government engaged in a systematic cover-up concerning its negligence on national security, we have had not a single substantive answer worthy of reflection. On the other substantive charge in this censure motion, as the Prime Minister escapes from the chamber—which is that this has been at great cost to this country’s hardworking wheat farmers and our economy more generally—we have had not a single substantive answer. They are the three charges contained in this censure motion and we have had not a single substantive answer. In fact, overnight the Prime Minister was saying that we the opposition owe this government an apology. I find this extraordinary. I have this question for the Minister for Foreign Affairs before he takes the dispatch box: who is going to apologise to Australia’s hardworking wheat farmers? Half a billion dollars has gone down the chute in terms of lost contracts in Iraq. Who is going to apologise to all the Australian companies whose reputation has now been traduced by this? Who is going to apologise to the thousands of our troops who have served in Iraq in the most difficult and dangerous operational environment? Today the Prime Minister was ducking and weaving around the truth, saying that the money sent to Iraq through the AWB was not used to buy weapons. My question to the Prime Minister—which the foreign minister will soon answer for him—is: who will apologise to the people who have suffered real harm here? Our wheat farmers, the rest of corporate Australia, this nation’s entire international standing and our troops in the field have been harmed. I think this shows the extent to which this Prime Minister is no longer in touch with the Australian people and what they think about this level of arrogance from the dispatch box today. If you listened carefully to the Prime Minister’s defence, you would know that it rested in large part on a rendition of the terms of reference. We have heard this time and time again in this chamber. It is time to bring this argument to its conclusion. The Prime Minister today said that Commissioner Cole in February this year issued a statement concerning his terms of reference. Commissioner Cole said at, I think, paragraph 12 of the document that if he needed extra powers he would write to the government and get them. What the Prime Minister has never admitted at this dispatch box is that the extra powers the commissioner could have asked of the government would have related only to matters relating to the criminality of the AWB and, as a consequence of that, possible criminality on the part of ministers and officials. When that document was released by the Cole commission in February 2006, I wrote to Commissioner Cole. I said: ‘Commissioner, you put out a statement about your terms of reference. You have asked for submissions—here is one. Will you add to your terms of reference a head of power which enables you to make determinations about whether ministers—in particular, the foreign minister—did their job? Will you add a term of reference, a head of power, which would enable you as commissioner to determine whether this minister did all that was reasonable and fair within his portfolio to uphold Australia’s obligations under UN sanctions against Iraq? Under the Australian Customs regulations, this minister—and nobody else—is the minister responsible.’ What was the gaping hole in Commissioner Cole’s terms of reference? It was that Commissioner Cole had no head of power whatsoever to determine whether the minister or the department did their job in that respect. So I wrote to the commissioner and said, ‘Commissioner, will you request that additional power?’ Through his office, he wrote back to me not more than a week or two later. What he said to me was highly instructive. He said: ‘Mr Rudd, those additional powers represent such a huge expansion of my existing powers that I could not possibly ask for that. The only way I could be given those powers is if the government gave them to me of its own accord.’ That is what he said in black and white. He said he could only request an extension of powers in relation to his current substantive terms of reference, which only went to matters of criminality. So there you have it in black and white from the commissioner. It was a royal commission established with narrow powers to look, in the first instance, purely at questions of criminality on the part of the AWB and, secondly and relatedly, at whether there was any associated criminality on the part of ministers or any other representative of the Commonwealth. On the question of ministers’ administrative responsibility under Australia’s domestic administrative law—the Customs regulations—there was not a single head of power. When I asked the commissioner to add that power, he said: ‘It’s not for me to ask, sonny Jim; it’s only for them to give. I don’t set the rules here.’ We have heard speeches overnight from various ministers in mock self-righteousness, indignation and all the rest of it saying that we should accept the umpire’s decision. I think the trade minister said that overnight. Our complaint is not with the umpire; our complaint is with the man who set the rules for the match—the Prime Minister. He set the rules. He set them so narrow and so tight that it became inevitable that these ministers would get a tick at the end of the day—so limited was the test that they had to pass. From this dispatch box, the Leader of the Opposition and I have said this repeatedly for nearly a year. They think that it is some marvellous revelation that they get off scot-free from a rorted set of terms of reference which were rorted from day one. The complaint is not against the umpire; the complaint is against the man who set the rules for the game within which the umpire operated, the man who set the rules for the match—and that is the Prime Minister himself. That is the core summary of the inherent flaw, failing and contradiction in the Prime Minister’s defence today concerning the terms of reference. The Prime Minister also took umbrage in his response to the Leader of the Opposition’s censure motion when he said that we had had the audacity to accuse these ministers of not telling the truth, of lying. We had repeated statements from the Prime Minister and the foreign minister about a range of things in the course of the events of this year which were simply not true. The Prime Minister stood up on one occasion and said all documents had been provided to the Cole commission of inquiry. Five days later, as I recollect, the Cole commission of inquiry issued subpoenas to every department in town to collect a whole new batch of documents. That is why I said this Prime Minister had lied. I do not recant from that one bit. It was technically accurate. We had the foreign minister and others claiming that they had fully cooperated with the Volcker inquiry, the one set up with by the UN in the first place. It is important to reflect on that in some detail as well. Guess what happened with Volcker? We found out during the course of this year that this minister had taken a submission from his department to the effect that no classified documents would be given by the government to Volcker and that no official would be made available to Volcker—so much so that Mr Volcker met our permanent representative in New York about a year into the inquiry and said, ‘You guys are not cooperating with the inquiry. Get your act together.’ That is when this Prime Minister, finally having been outed by that revelation from Mr Volcker, made his handwritten annotation to public service departments: ‘There shall now be full cooperation with Volcker.’ For a year they tried to subvert the Volcker inquiry, and the documentary evidence of that is clear. So, on this question of how unfair it is for us to say that this mob have been short on the truth in what they have said, I simply put that forward as exhibit B. They said that they had fully cooperated with Volcker; we found out from the documentary record that they did absolutely nothing of the sort. The final element on which this Prime Minister was so indignant today relates to what I have just said, but it is a broader point as well. He asked how we could possibly accuse this government, from whom righteousness beams forth from their souls. How could we possibly accuse this government of a cover-up? Let us leave the history to one side. Let us leave aside the ‘children overboard’ affair and everything we have got to know about the viscera of this government—understanding how they actually work, how they think and how they feel. ‘Here is a problem; here is a piece of truth—where is a box to hide it in now?’ That is in fact their standard modus operandi. If you go to the facts of this in terms of a cover-up, first of all there is the issue of the Volcker inquiry; secondly, there is the issue of the US Senate inquiry, the Coleman inquiry, and hurriedly despatching officials to Washington on the eve of the Australian national elections in October 2004 to shut that inquiry down. Do you know why? Because they did not want it to come out a month before the Australian election. They did not want to cruel the Iraq pitch for themselves. But there is a third point when it comes to a cover-up—the first is Volcker and the second is the Coleman inquiry—that is, the terms of reference of the Cole inquiry itself. We have addressed that in some detail in our response on this censure. The Prime Minister and the foreign minister were disturbed today by the question asked by the Leader of the Opposition on a cover-up. There is one very interesting thing contained in this report—I think it is in volume 4. It says that as of June 2004 this mob over here, that is the minister’s department, ‘knew’—and these are not my words; these are the commissioner’s words—that the AWB had engaged a Jordanian company and that they were aware that that Jordanian company could well have been providing money to Saddam’s regime. That is Commissioner Cole’s conclusion: that as of June 2004 this mob over here—that is, the department of foreign affairs—actually knew that. The point of the opposition leader’s question today was about how is it, then, that three months after that this minister sends his department to the Americans in Washington and says there is absolutely no foundation to any accusation in America that the AWB was providing kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime. Minister, it does not add up. Mr Cole has now said that in June 2004 your department knew. And three months later you went in and deliberately deceived the Americans. That is what you did. I have to say that that was done not just on one occasion by the acting ambassador in Washington but also on a second occasion by Ambassador Thorley—both occasions being immediately prior to the election. So when they stand here with mock self-indignation, mock self-righteousness, and say, ‘How could you accuse us of a cover-up?’, think of these terms of reference, think of Volcker and think of how they have handled this US Senate inquiry. The Leader of the Opposition got it absolutely right today in nailing precisely what this government’s ultimate defence on Cole is. Their defence is threefold. It is a defence based on ignorance, a defence based on incompetence and a defence based on negligence. That is what they say: ‘You cannot blame us for anything which happened in the five years that this scandal ran because we were ignorant, we were incompetent and we were negligent.’ That is their defence. Do you know why they cannot take the opposite view? Because if they said they were actually doing their job, they would have known something about what went on. They feared that intensely, because that would land them in the dock with the AWB, complicit in the actions between the AWB and Saddam Hussein’s regime. These are the only two options available to them. So their defence is: ‘We are a government which is ignorant, a government which is negligent and a government which is incompetent.’ Their strategy is this, when it comes to this country’s national security: eyes wide shut. The member for Bendigo mentioned this to me this morning; it is three words: eyes wide shut. That is a terrific defence if you are interested in getting yourself off the hook in a courtroom, but it is a lousy strategy if you are interested in this country’s national security. The Australian people want eyes wide open, not eyes wide shut. But this government concluded that they needed, absolutely, eyes wide shut in order to get through the rigours of the Cole inquiry. So what you saw last night was a popping of the champagne corks, a celebration of their collective negligence, incompetence and ignorance, because that constitutes the essence of their defence against the charges made against them. This has been a long debate. It has run for more than a year since we first asked questions at this dispatch box. But this government stand censured for three things. They stand censured because they have been found, in five volumes, to be grossly negligent in discharging their national security obligations. They have been found to have engaged in three exercises of cover-up concerning their negligence because they did not want that to become known to the Australian people. And they have been found to have delivered this negligence at a profound cost to our wheat farmers, our economy, and our general corporate sector. But, overall, what has suffered here is the doctrine of ministerial accountability, because today this minister refused to accept even one jot of responsibility for the worst corruption scandal in Australia’s history. (Time expired) 57 15:54:00 Downer, Alexander, MP 4G4 Mayo LP Minister for Foreign Affairs 1 0 Mr DOWNER —For the last year, the Leader of the Opposition in particular has made a series of utterly outrageous claims. DT4 Crean, Simon, MP Mr Crean —No, they haven’t! You should apologise! 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! First of all, I remind members that, in this debate, while it is a censure motion, all speakers have been heard without interruption. 83T Rudd, Kevin, MP Mr Rudd —Mr Speaker, on a point of order, I ask you to require the Minister for Foreign Affairs to address members by their proper titles. 4G4 Downer, Alexander, MP Mr DOWNER —Mr Speaker, for the last year, the Leader of the Opposition, in particular—who now walks out, with all the courage he can muster; he is a weak and dishonest man—has engaged in some of the most egregious slurs that I have seen in my 22 years in politics. Let us just take this example, from an interview with Mr Carlton on Radio 2UE on 24 January: CARLTON: Do you really believe that the Government knew that the AWB was bribing Saddam Hussein and his henchmen? BEAZLEY: Absolutely. The Leader of the Opposition went on to say at the National Press Club about a week later: ‘This episode exposes the immorality and the corruption besetting this government.’ He went on the Lateline program on 6 February and said: What we’re interested is demonstrating as well what we believe to be the case and that’s that they turned a blind eye to it ... He said ‘they turned a blind eye’ a month or so later. On 24 March on Radio 2UE—his favourite outlet, apparently—the Leader of the Opposition said: On AWB they have been dissembling, not telling the truth for months ... ...             ...             ... ... they have been deceiving. They have been telling lies. ...             ...             ... They have been doing everything to cover this up ... The problem with this particular narrative is that it is manifestly untrue, and the Cole commission has proven the allegations made by the Leader of the Opposition and by the member for Griffith to be completely false. And of course these allegations have been picked up by some others and run all over Australia. So all over Australia we have had these allegations that we are liars, that we are cheats, that we were involved in cover-ups, that we are corrupt. Mr Speaker, excuse me if I say this to the House, but it is a preposterous thing to allege that against a member of parliament of any party at any time and for that subsequently to have been exposed as being simply untrue—and that is what has happened here. The Cole commission has been an outstanding effort to expose the activities of AWB Ltd and its deceit of the Australian government; in that respect it has certainly been outstanding. Indeed, the government has been vindicated in the setting up of the Cole commission to get to the heart of what had been happening in terms of the wheat trade with Iraq. But the Cole commission has incidentally taken out the Leader of the Opposition’s credibility. He has been standing in this parliament and at the National Press Club, and speaking over and over again on radio and television throughout the last year, telling manifest untruths. He has been lying over and over again. And that has been proven by the Cole commission. This commission is an enormous embarrassment to the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Griffith, whose only defence is now to turn around and say, ‘We don’t like the terms of reference. The terms of reference didn’t look into the government’—‘didn’t look into the government’! The Prime Minister, the foreign minister and the trade minister—the Deputy Prime Minister—spent hours in the witness box. ‘Didn’t look into the government’! I myself spent—I might be wrong—3½ to four hours answering questions from counsel, and not just counsel assisting the commissioner; I spent hours being cross-examined by various counsel representing AWB employees and the like. The government was not only transparent in going before the commission; the government’s documentation was run through with a fine-tooth comb by Commissioner Cole and, of course, all the people who assisted him. And what did it show? It showed a lot of things. But one thing it showed is that what the Labor Party, particularly the Leader of the Opposition, and others, have been saying about the Prime Minister, ministers, and the officials of my department, is quite untrue. We have silly questions today—no new information—and the Leader of the Opposition moves his entirely predictable censure motion. Well, it was not actually entirely predictable, because I did not think he would continue with his campaign of falsehood. The first point he makes is that the government was negligent in relation to the 35 warnings. The problem for the Leader of the Opposition and the problem for the Labor Party is that Commissioner Cole addressed the issue of the warnings. Although I know the Leader of the Opposition has not read any of the Cole report, or hardly any of the Cole commission report— TK6 Southcott, Dr Andrew, MP Dr Southcott —He doesn’t read the papers! 4G4 Downer, Alexander, MP Mr DOWNER —and, as the honourable member says, he does not even read the papers—some of his staff will have gone through it—and notice the fact that you get no questions from the Labor Party about the warnings. Why is that, do you think? Why is it that they run the warnings as an assertion, and they get others to run them, but they do not ever confront the government directly with the issue of the warnings? It is because Commissioner Cole went to this issue and said: ‘In regard to the many events during and after the oil for food program, it is not a correct approach to consider such events and circumstances cumulatively’ and ‘it is not permissible to use hindsight to seek to establish a relationship between events’. Commissioner Cole dismissed this allegation in black and white but the Leader of the Opposition, who has not read the report and never will read the report, just rants his assertions with false anger and the false indignation of which he is a master—of course, the public has spotted that. He is exposed by the Cole commission yet again for being wrong. Did we know about the kickbacks? The Cole commission says no. The Leader of the Opposition knows better, does he? He says yes. He says yes but the Cole commission says no. Does the Cole commission say that the officials of my department are corrupt or colluding with AWB Ltd or are bad people? Does the commissioner say that? No, he does not. The Labor Party says that—but not the commissioner. The Labor Party has been smearing the reputation of officials of my department, implying—and sometimes saying—they are in collusion with AWB Ltd in a cover-up and corruption. That is a vile thing to have said about those officials. The House may be interested to know that, as the leader of that portfolio, I pass on their sentiments to this House and to this nation. The anger of some of the people in my department over what has been said and written about them and their integrity is palpable. They are completely vindicated by the Cole commission. The Leader of the Opposition’s motion says that the government attempted to shut down the US senate inquiry into AWB in 2004. The government did not. The government never attempted to shut down that inquiry. The government only asked that AWB be treated with procedural fairness: that it be treated fairly and in a non-discriminatory way—non-discriminatory vis-a-vis American companies. And, of course, AWB, through all that period—the period of the Volcker inquiry and right up to the end of the Volcker inquiry—were continuing to insist that they were not involved in kickbacks. If you read the whole report, you will see exactly what is said and what the issues really are. I have mentioned already, as the Prime Minister has, that the Leader of the Opposition said that the government had failed: ... to provide the Cole Inquiry with powers to determine whether or not Ministers did their job ... If ministers had known about this and ministers had not enforced the sanctions regime, that would be a profoundly serious offence—it is only that that is not true. The Cole commission has found that that is not true. And that is a matter of profound embarrassment to the blowhard Leader of the Opposition: for all his abuse and denigration of people, his abuse has been found to be entirely without foundation. The fact is—and this is the problem with the Labor Party and their fellow travellers’ narrative—they think that somehow the government was in favour of sanctions busting of Saddam Hussein’s regime but at the same time in favour of getting rid of the regime. See, Mr Speaker, if you can work out the logic of that! Why would we get rid of Saddam Hussein’s regime if our view was that the great thing about it was that we could make a lot of money out of it—and who cares about the sanctions? Why would we have got rid of the regime? We presumably, according to that narrative, would have opposed, tooth and nail, the overthrow of Saddam’s regime. Actually, quite the reverse is true: there were several occasions during that sanctions regime when I was attacked—not, admittedly, by the Labor Party—by people for our support for the sanctions. There were assertions made that the sanctions were hurting the livelihoods of ordinary people in Iraq and that I was a terrible person who supported those sanctions. I remember seeing people who came to argue the case that we should not support the sanctions and that we should support the lifting of the sanctions. I never did; I always supported the sanctions. As Commissioner Cole has shown, no instruction was given by any minister at any time from March 1996 up until the dismantling of the sanctions to go soft on the sanctions, to dismantle the sanctions or to abandon the sanctions. No instruction was given to do anything except uphold the sanctions. Nobody in the department ever thought they were doing anything but upholding the sanctions. The suggestion here of the Labor Party’s narrative is that we were in favour of getting rid of Saddam Hussein and we were in favour of sanctions busting. Not only are both propositions entirely inconsistent but the argument is entirely incoherent. It is intellectually false. I tell you what: the Australian public know that. They know we were not opposed to sanctions—they know we supported the sanctions—and they know we were opposed, unlike the Labor Party, to Saddam Hussein’s regime to such an extent that we were prepared to contribute to getting rid of it. It is good riddance to bad rubbish, too, because it is a great thing that that regime has gone. What would have happened if the mendacious, self-righteous Leader of the Opposition had had his way? We do not really know what would have happened, of course, because you never know what he really thinks on any given day. It depends which way the wind is blowing. But, according to his current rhetoric, not necessarily according to what he would have done at the time, Saddam Hussein would still be in power today, the oil for food program would still be in place and of course nobody would be any the wiser about the kickback regime that was taking place in the oil for food program. That is what would have happened if the Labor Party had had its way. That is what would have happened if the Labor Party had been influential enough in government to influence world policy. This Labor Party is led by the weakest man who has ever led the Labor Party. And it is not just my assertion; the public are onto it. Even the member for Griffith is twice as popular as the Leader of the Opposition to be the leader of the Labor Party. I agree with them: although the member for Griffith has been mendacious, the Leader of the Opposition’s performance throughout this matter has been a tissue of lies. Question put: That the motion (That the motion (Mr Beazley’s) be agreed to.) be agreed to. 16:12:00 The House divided.     (The Speaker—Hon. David Hawker) 58 Adams, D.G.H. Albanese, A.N. Beazley, K.C. Bevis, A.R. Bird, S. Bowen, C. Burke, A.E. Burke, A.S. Byrne, A.M. Crean, S.F. Danby, M. * Edwards, G.J. Elliot, J. Ellis, A.L. Ellis, K. Emerson, C.A. Ferguson, L.D.T. Ferguson, M.J. Fitzgibbon, J.A. Garrett, P. Georganas, S. George, J. Gibbons, S.W. Gillard, J.E. Grierson, S.J. Griffin, A.P. Hall, J.G. * Hatton, M.J. Hayes, C.P. Hoare, K.J. Irwin, J. Kerr, D.J.C. King, C.F. Lawrence, C.M. Livermore, K.F. Macklin, J.L. McClelland, R.B. McMullan, R.F. Melham, D. Murphy, J.P. O’Connor, B.P. O’Connor, G.M. Owens, J. Plibersek, T. Price, L.R.S. Quick, H.V. Ripoll, B.F. Roxon, N.L. Rudd, K.M. Sawford, R.W. Sercombe, R.C.G. Smith, S.F. Swan, W.M. Tanner, L. Thomson, K.J. Vamvakinou, M. Wilkie, K. Windsor, A.H.C. 83 Abbott, A.J. Anderson, J.D. Andrews, K.J. Bailey, F.E. Baird, B.G. Baker, M. Baldwin, R.C. Barresi, P.A. Bartlett, K.J. Billson, B.F. Bishop, B.K. Bishop, J.I. Broadbent, R. Brough, M.T. Cadman, A.G. Causley, I.R. Ciobo, S.M. Cobb, J.K. Costello, P.H. Downer, A.J.G. Dutton, P.C. Elson, K.S. Entsch, W.G. Farmer, P.F. Fawcett, D. Ferguson, M.D. Forrest, J.A. Gambaro, T. Gash, J. Georgiou, P. Haase, B.W. Hardgrave, G.D. Hartsuyker, L. Henry, S. Hockey, J.B. Howard, J.W. Hull, K.E. * Hunt, G.A. Jensen, D. Johnson, M.A. Jull, D.F. Keenan, M. Kelly, D.M. Kelly, J.M. Laming, A. Ley, S.P. Lindsay, P.J. Lloyd, J.E. Macfarlane, I.E. Markus, L. May, M.A. McArthur, S. * McGauran, P.J. Mirabella, S. Moylan, J.E. Nairn, G.R. Nelson, B.J. Neville, P.C. Prosser, G.D. Pyne, C. Randall, D.J. Richardson, K. Robb, A. Ruddock, P.M. Schultz, A. Scott, B.C. Secker, P.D. Slipper, P.N. Smith, A.D.H. Somlyay, A.M. Southcott, A.J. Stone, S.N. Thompson, C.P. Tollner, D.W. Truss, W.E. Tuckey, C.W. Turnbull, M. Vaile, M.A.J. Vale, D.S. Vasta, R. Wakelin, B.H. Washer, M.J. Wood, J. Question negatived. 61 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: ADDITIONAL answers 61 61 16:17:00 Mr HOWARD,MP ZD4 Bennelong LP Prime Minister 1 0 Mr HOWARD —Mr Speaker, I seek the indulgence of the chair to add to an answer. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —The Prime Minister may proceed. ZD4 Howard, John, MP Mr HOWARD —I want to correct a slight mistake in an answer I gave to the member for La Trobe today. I said in my answer that the percentage of Victorian children enrolled in Catholic and independent schools was higher than in any other part of Australia. I should have said it was higher than in any other state. In fact the percentage in that category in the ACT is higher than anywhere else, but amongst the states Victoria has the highest enrolment of children in independent and Catholic schools at 35 per cent, against a nationwide average of 33 per cent. PE4 Beazley, Kim, MP Mr Beazley —Prime Minister, weren’t you going to add to your answer and say that the Catholic teachers are also on strike on Thursday? 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —The Leader of the Opposition will resume his seat; question time is finished. ZD4 Howard, John, MP Mr HOWARD —Any teacher who goes on strike is not doing the right thing by their students, and I do not exempt anybody from that. 62 PERSONAL EXPLANATIONS 62 16:18:00 Beazley, Kim, MP PE4 Brand ALP Leader of the Opposition 0 0 Mr BEAZLEY —Mr Speaker, I wish to make a personal explanation. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Does the honourable member claim to have been misrepresented? PE4 Beazley, Kim, MP Mr BEAZLEY —Yes. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Please proceed. PE4 Beazley, Kim, MP Mr BEAZLEY —I have again been misrepresented by the Prime Minister. He persists in this argument that somehow or other I was half in support or in support of his war effort. He got that absolutely wrong. We opposed it absolutely and sensibly on this side of the House. Simply because we thought there might have been weapons of mass destruction did not cause us to think we should go down such an idiotic path. 62 Questions to the Speaker 62 62 16:19:00 Georganas, Steve, MP DZY Hindmarsh ALP 0 Mr GEORGANAS —Mr Speaker, I seek your assistance under standing order 105(b). It has been over 60 days since the following questions were put on the Notice Paper: question No. 3173, which was put on the Notice Paper on 2 March; No. 3619, 13 June; No. 3799, 8 August; No. 3800, 8 August; and No. 3863, 9 August. I ask you to write to the relevant ministers and seek the relevant answers to those questions. It has been a long time for some of them. 62 SPEAKER, The 10000 PO N/A 1 The SPEAKER —I thank the member for Hindmarsh and I will follow up his request. 62 AUDITOR-GENERAL’S REPORTS 62 62 16:20:00 SPEAKER, The 10000 PO N/A 1 0 The SPEAKER —I present the Auditor-General’s Audit reports No. 36 of 2005-06 entitled Management of the Tiger Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter Project—Air 87—Department of Defence—Defence Materiel Organisation—Corrigendum; No. 11 of 2006-07 entitled National Food Industry Strategy—Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry; and No. 12 of 2006-07 entitled Management of Family Tax Benefit overpayments. Ordered that the reports be made parliamentary papers. 62 DOCUMENTS Mr ABBOTT (Warringah —Leader of the House) 16:20:00 —Documents are tabled in accordance with the list circulated to honourable members earlier today. Details of the documents will be recorded in the Votes and Proceedings and Hansard and I move: That the House take note of the following documents: Aged Care Act 1997—Report for 2005-06. Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency—Report for 2005-06. Gene Technology Act 2000—Statutory review of the Gene Technology Act 2000 and the Gene Technology Agreement—State, Territory and Australian governments’ response, November 2006. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission—Report for 2005-06. Land and Water Australia—Report for 2005-06. Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Act—Report on financial assistance granted to each State in respect of 2005. Snowy Hydro Limited—Report for the period 3 July 2005 to 1 July 2006. Telstra Corporation Limited—Report on equal employment opportunity for 2005-06. Debate (on motion by Ms Gillard) adjourned. 62 MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE 62 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —I have received letters from the honourable member for Wills and the honourable member for New England proposing that definite matters of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion today. As required by standing order 46(d) I have selected the matter which, in my opinion, is the most urgent and important; that is, that proposed by the honourable member for Wills, namely: The Government’s negligence and incompetence in the $300 million wheat for weapons scandal that has cost Australian wheat farmers and Australia’s international trading reputation dearly. I therefore call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places. More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places— 63 16:22:00 Thomson, Kelvin, MP UK6 Wills ALP 0 0 Mr KELVIN THOMSON —Mr Speaker— Mr ABBOTT (Warringah —Minister for Health and Ageing) 16:22:00 —I move: That the business of the day be called on. Question agreed to. 63 BILLS R2590 63 BILLS R2577 63 BILLS R2613 63 Message received from the Senate returning the bills without amendment or request. 63 BILLS R2644 63 BILLS R2645 63 BILLS R2647 63 Mr BARTLETT (Macquarie) 16:23:00 —by leave—I move: That the bills be referred to the Main Committee for further consideration. Question agreed to. 63 COMMITTEES 63 63 63 16:23:00 Causley, Ian (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) 10000 PO N/A 1 0 The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. IR Causley) —I present the report of the Selection Committee relating to the consideration of committee and delegation reports and private members’ business on Monday 4 December 2006. The report will be printed in today’s Hansard and the items accorded priority for debate will be published in the Notice Paper for the next sitting. The report read as follows— Report relating to the consideration of committee and delegation reports and private Members’ business on Monday, 4 December 2006 Pursuant to standing order 222, the Selection Committee has determined the order of precedence and times to be allotted for consideration of committee and delegation reports and private Members’ business on Monday, 4 December 2006.  The order of precedence and the allotments of time determined by the Committee are as follows: COMMITTEE AND DELEGATION REPORTS Presentation and statements 1    AUSTRALIAN PARLIAMENTARY DELEGATION TO THE 115TH INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION ASSEMBLY (GENEVA, 16-19 OCTOBER 2006) AND TO PORTUGAL (20-25 OCTOBER 2006) Report of the Australian Parliamentary Delegation to the 115th Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly (Geneva, 16-19 October 2006) and to Portugal (20-25 October 2006) The Committee determined that statements on the report may be made —all statements to conclude by 12:40pm Speech time limits — Each Member —5 minutes. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins] 2    JOINT STANDING COMMITTEE ON MIGRATION Report of the Parliamentary Delegation to New Zealand: Australia – New Zealand Committee Exchange Program The Committee determined that no statements on the report may be made. 3    STANDING COMMITTEE ON INDUSTRY AND RESOURCES Report —Australia’s Uranium: Greenhouse Friendly Fuel for an Energy Hungry World The Committee determined that statements on the report may be made —all statements to conclude by 12:55pm Speech time limits — Each Member —5 minutes. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins] 4    STANDING COMMITTEE ON ECONOMICS, FINANCE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION Report —Review of the Reserve Bank of Australia Annual Report 2005 (Second Report) The Committee determined that statements on the report may be made —all statements to conclude by 1:05pm Speech time limits — Each Member —5 minutes. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins] 5    PARLIAMENTARY JOINT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY Report —Review of Security and Counter Terrorism Legislation The Committee determined that statements on the report may be made —all statements to conclude by 1:15pm Speech time limits — Each Member —5 minutes. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins] 6    STANDING COMMITTEE ON HEALTH AND AGEING Report —The Blame Game: Report on the inquiry into health funding The Committee determined that statements on the report may be made —all statements to conclude by 1:25pm Speech time limits — Each Member —5 minutes. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins] 7    STANDING COMMITTEE ON LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS Report —Harmonisation of Legal Systems Within Australia and between Australia and New Zealand The Committee determined that statements on the report may be made —all statements to conclude by 1:35pm Speech time limits — Each Member —5 minutes. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins] 8    STANDING COMMITTEE ON EMPLOYMENT, WORKPLACE RELATIONS AND WORKFORCE PARTICIPATION Report —Employment in the automotive component manufacturing sector The Committee determined that statements on the report may be made —all statements to conclude by 1:45pm Speech time limits — Each Member —5 minutes. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins] 9    JOINT COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTS AND AUDIT Report 409: Developments in Aviation Security since the Committee’s June 2004; Report 400: Review of Aviation Security in Australia The Committee determined that statements on the report may be made —time allotted 10 minutes Speech time limits — Each Member —5 minutes. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins] PRIVATE MEMBERS’ BUSINESS Order of precedence Notices 1   Mr Cadman to move: That the House: notes the maturing relationship between Vietnam and Australia, the high-level contacts between Prime Ministers, Australia’s development cooperation program of approximately $81 million per year and the strong people-to-people links; notes continuing international concern about human rights issues in Vietnam, including gaoling, administrative detention and harassment of human rights activists for their advocacy of democracy and religious freedom; notes the importance of addressing the cases of individuals such as The Most Venerable Thich Quang Do and Thich Huyen Quang, Hoa Hao Elder Mr Le Quang Liem, Pastor Nguyen Cong Chinh, Dr Pham Hong Son, journalists Nguyen Khac Toan and Hguyen Vu Binh and many ethnic Montagnard people such as Siu Boch, A Brih and Y Tim Bya; calls on the Vietnamese Government to observe its international obligations on human rights, including the provision of free and fair elections; and notes the Australian Government’s active support for, and promotion of, democratic freedoms and human rights in Vietnam, including through the annual human rights dialogue and other cooperation programs, and encourages the Government to continue these efforts. (Notice given 27 November 2006.) Time allotted —30 minutes. Speech time limits — Mover of motion —5 minutes. First Opposition Member speaking —5 minutes. Other Members —5 minutes each. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 6 x 5 mins] The Committee determined that consideration f this matter should continue on a future day. 2    Ms K. M. Ellis to move: That the House: notes the detrimental impact that the Howard Government’s WorkChoices legislation is having on young workers across Australia; expresses deep concern over the number of teenagers who now find themselves employed under the Howard Government’s workplace agreements; and takes immediate action to restore employment protections for the 2006 graduates from Australian high schools, many of whom are entering the workforce for the first time upon their graduation and are at risk of being exploited under these new laws. (Notice given 1 November 2006.) Time allotted —remaining private Members’ business time. Speech time limits — Mover of motion —5 minutes. First Government Member speaking —5 minutes. Other Members —5 minutes each. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 4 x 5 mins] The Committee determined that consideration f this matter should continue on a future day. 66 BILLS R2622 66 Debate resumed. 66 16:24:00 Johnson, Michael, MP 00AMX Ryan LP 1 0 Mr JOHNSON —In the Australian parliament, as the representative of the people of Ryan, I have great pleasure in speaking on the Crimes Amendment (Bail and Sentencing) Bill 2006. I very strongly commend it to my electorate and to the House of Representatives. This is an important bill that the Howard government is again putting before the parliament. It is all about reconciliation and ensuring that this is a strong and united country irrespective of whether we are Indigenous Australians or white Australians. I think this is a piece of legislation that is very important for all of us to take note of. I want to briefly mention the notion of reconciliation before I go on to the substance of the bill because I think it is important. Reconciliation with our Indigenous communities is one of the most important challenges facing our nation. I think that for any federal government this should always remain a priority irrespective of the political colour of that government. I think that true reconciliation is something that needs to be worked on—it is a work in progress—with all stakeholders of goodwill coming together. I want to quote the views of this side of the parliament as to what embraces true reconciliation as expressed by the Prime Minister in his Menzies lecture in December 2000 on the very important issue of Indigenous Australians. He said: True reconciliation is, in our view, to be best found within practical means to improve the well-being and happiness of indigenous Australians and raising standards to levels enjoyed and expected by all of us. The essence of that is that we are all Australians and we all have every entitlement to enjoy equal standards, equal opportunities and equal prosperity. These should not be limited to any section of the Australian community. Of course, we all know that Indigenous Australians in the past have suffered greatly. No-one should try to deny that. No-one should try to walk away from that fact. But as a modern, sophisticated, 21st century nation it is time that we look forward and have a vision to come together and to address the challenges and the difficulties that we have in this country. That is why this bill is important. It reconfirms that the Indigenous Australians of this country ought to be treated in the very same way as non-Indigenous Australians in our criminal justice system. I know that the electorate of Ryan, which I represent here in the parliament, would have been very shocked to see the Lateline program of several months ago that alleged the abuse of children in the remote Mutitjulu community. These allegations came on top of claims earlier in the year that petrol sniffing and substance abuse was also rife within the Mutitjulu community. I think those allegations have again highlighted the need for reconciliation efforts to be a priority of any Australian government, and the Howard government does make this a very strong priority. People of goodwill in this parliament, people with a genuine desire to make a difference in our country, should try and work together on this issue, as we should on many other issues that we face. According to the 2001 census, Australia’s Indigenous population was some 458,000. Of course, that was five years ago and no doubt that figure is well and truly past the half-million mark. I do not have the precise figure but it would be well and truly past that. The census of this year will reveal the most up-to-date figures when it is made public some time soon. That figure represents approximately 2.4 per cent of the overall population of Australia. However, Indigenous people make up 24 per cent of Australians living in areas classified as either remote or very remote. More than half of all Indigenous people live in New South Wales or my home state of Queensland—the greatest state in the Commonwealth, of course! In 2001 Queensland was home to just under 126,000 Indigenous Australians. The Indigenous population in our country is growing faster than the non-Indigenous population. Non-Indigenous growth is some 1.8 per cent compared to Indigenous growth of two per cent. We, as the duly elected government of this country, have an obligation to pass laws in this parliament that seek to make a difference in the Australian electorate. Indigenous affairs is a very important area, and at the moment that portfolio is under the stewardship of Minister Mal Brough, who is doing an outstanding job. We are trying to get away from the ideologically driven policies of previous Labor governments which focused more on rights than responsibilities and more on division than unity. Labor clearly neglected to make any practical advance in the areas of Indigenous health and education and tried to promote more of a handout than a hand-up mindset. In my home state of Queensland, Noel Pearson is a highly respected voice on Indigenous affairs, and I might say I had the pleasure of going to the same school as him in Brisbane—St Peter’s Lutheran College, in the suburb of Indooroopilly. He has become one of this country’s significant spokesmen on Indigenous affairs, bringing a clear intellect and voice to this important area of policy. The federal Labor government of past years had an ideological focus, whereas this government is trying to focus on making a real and meaningful impact on health, education and related issues such as safety and security for Indigenous women, particularly young women who are very much at risk from criminal behaviour by Indigenous men in their communities. Clearly, this bill is all about what the government is doing to address that. I want to quote Senator Chris Evans of the Labor Party because he made a very interesting speech in which he gave an instructive acknowledgement of Labor’s dismal failure to address this issue. He acknowledges himself that this ideological commitment is the wrong approach. He said: Labor’s ideological commitment to the rights agenda, self-determination and reconciliation was not matched by a successful attack on the fundamental causes of Indigenous disadvantage. We put too much faith in the capacity of the rights agenda to contribute to overcoming entrenched Indigenous disadvantage. He goes on in the speech to make remarks about trying to address Indigenous wellbeing under a future Labor government. Of course, this government’s record stands proudly because it is making a difference. In April 2004 it became clear that the ATSIC experiment, which was introduced by the Labor Party, had failed to respond to the crisis in confidence in this supposedly peak and supposedly representative Indigenous body. The government responded swiftly and decisively, announcing sweeping reforms that included the abolition of the ATSIC organisation. In terms of the budget that the Commonwealth allocates to this very critical area of national policy, real spending on Indigenous-specific programs has increased by almost 50 per cent over the last decade from the levels when the Howard government was first elected in 1996. The 2006-07 budget provides the biggest investment in Indigenous affairs. More than $3.3 billion of Australian taxpayers’ money is allocated by the Howard government to areas of health, education, housing and security for our Indigenous Australians. All taxpayers in this country would expect that that money is allocated and invested appropriately and that it does produce outcomes that improve the lives of our Indigenous Australians. This $3.3 billion includes almost $500 million in additional spending to support 24 new Indigenous projects spanning six portfolios. I commend that. The background to this bill is about leadership from the government over the issue of extensive reports and allegations of violence in Aboriginal communities. With this bill the government is taking the lead to implement the outcomes of the Intergovernmental Summit on Violence and Child Abuse in Indigenous Communities, held in June 2006, which were later confirmed by COAG at its July 2006 meeting. The summit was concerned about the examples of customary law being used to mitigate the punishments for criminal offences, resulting in the guilty parties getting significantly lighter sentences than would otherwise be condoned by the law. In particular, there were concerns over the lack of testing of what defendants claimed to be customary law. This is a totally untenable situation where we have two sets of laws in this country: the common law and the statute law of this country, on the one hand, versus customary law that is applied to Indigenous Australians. I know the overwhelming majority of the Ryan electorate would not accept that as being in the best interests of a united Australian nation. A woman who, for example, is the subject of sexual abuse in an Aboriginal community is entitled to the same justice as a victim who lives in any other part of Australia, in any other suburb of the cities of this country. They should not be treated differently. They are entitled to see the guilty party appropriately punished and not given a lesser, and in some cases much lesser, sentence simply because that person claims the act was condoned by customary law. There is the example of the 55-year-old man who was initially only jailed for one month for anally raping a 14-year-old girl. The judge in that case accepted that, under tribal law, the victim was his promised bride. In 21st century Australia, to me as an individual in this country, separate from my Ryan electorate representative duties here, that is absolutely untenable. Someone who rapes a 14-year-old girl being jailed for one month is just beyond the pale. This government must ensure that those sorts of examples do not become part of an Indigenous legal culture, if I can put it that way. In another example, a 29-year-old Aboriginal man choked his pregnant wife to death before burning her and their unborn child on a bonfire. In that case, his conviction would have dictated a sentence of ‘strict security life imprisonment’ with a minimum term of between 20 and 30 years of imprisonment. The man in this particular case, however, had already been subject to traditional punishment by his tribe, which the judge took into account, instead imposing a life sentence with parole after only 19 years. So it was 19 years versus, potentially, 30 years of imprisonment simply because his tribe had, in their view, in their wisdom and in their culture, dealt out traditional punishment. In this country all of us are subject to the same laws of the Commonwealth and the states. I want to assure my electorate of Ryan that under the Howard government the Australian judicial system, the Australian laws of this land, will not condone such serious offences as sexual violence and abuse in order to allow guilty parties to escape appropriate punishment. While it is important to take into account a person’s background during sentencing, the cultural background of a person should not be held up as something of particular and special consideration in the sentencing process. Moreover, it should certainly never be used to sideline the rights of the victims and avoid full and proper punishment for any offence. It is interesting to note that COAG, in its joint communique presented at the July meeting of COAG, reflects this view. What COAG stated is very instructive to all of us: The law’s response to family and community violence and sexual abuse must reflect the seriousness of such crimes. COAG agreed that no customary law or cultural practice excuses, justifies, authorises, requires or lessens the seriousness of violence or sexual abuse. All jurisdictions agree that their laws will reflect this, if necessary by future amendment. I take the opportunity in parliament to commend the Northern Territory government because I understand that they have been very much on the front foot to pass legislation that reflects the COAG statement. The Deputy Chief Minister, Mr Sid Stirling, has said publicly that the laws of the Northern Territory do reflect what COAG agreed to. He said: In the Northern Territory we’ve change the rules on customary law—you can’t use it as a defence and in sentencing it’s controlled, tested and limited. On the other hand, I want to highlight the absurd position of the Western Australian Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Sheila McHale, who strongly supports tribal law and told the summit in Canberra that Western Australia did not support the elimination of Indigenous tribal law. That was rebuked by magistrate Sue Gordon, the chairwoman of the National Indigenous Council, who very commendably hit out at plans to give Western Australian judges and magistrates great discretion to consider Aboriginal tribal law when dealing with criminal cases. I commend her in the national parliament for her position. Regrettably, time is getting away from me, as it always does when I am speaking on a very important bill in the interests of this country’s future. The Australian government wishes to ensure that all Australians are treated equally under Australian law and that victims receive the justice to which they are entitled. The bill therefore amends the sentencing and bail provisions in the Crimes Act 1914 to require a court to consider the potential impact on victims and witnesses, and specifically the potential impact on victims and witnesses in remote communities, when granting and imposing bail conditions for Commonwealth offences. Most significantly, the bill deletes the reference to ‘cultural background’ in section 16A of the Crimes Act for all Commonwealth offences and ensures that no customary law or cultural practice excuses, justifies, authorises, requires, or lessens the seriousness of any criminal behaviour with which that act is concerned. Essentially, the bill confirms that no customary law or cultural practice excuses criminal behaviour, including unlawful violence or sexual abuse. Of course, a lot of sheer nonsense has come from the opposition. I hope that the Labor speaker who will follow me, a highly respected member of this parliament and a senior counsel, will not follow the remarks of the speaker before me, who talked about this bill as simply being about getting headlines and about mere political opportunism. I very much hope that he does not follow that course of conduct because that allegation is quite an affront to those on this side of the House—that we would pass this piece of very significant legislation taking away cultural background as an aspect of a Commonwealth act simply for headlines. That is an affront to me personally, and an affront to this government. I hope that the quality of his presentation exceeds—and I am sure it will—that of the speaker before me in the debate on this bill. In conclusion, I end my remarks by supporting this bill very strongly and by quoting the opposition leader and shadow Attorney-General of the Northern Territory, who made a very significant point. He said: The women and children who are brutalised every day in Central Australia are, apparently, meant to take great comfort from the knowledge that their violent, and usually drunk, attackers have some passing acquaintance with, and at best tenuous involvement in, some cultural practices. Of course, they are not. This bill ensures for victims that terrible and brutal crimes committed by Indigenous men cannot be hidden under the charade of customary law when it comes to them facing legal sanction for their behaviour. (Time expired) 70 16:44:00 Kerr, Duncan, MP RH4 Denison ALP 0 0 Mr KERR —I assure the honourable member for Ryan that, far from thinking that this proposition has been put forward merely to obtain headlines, I think its motivation is far worse. I think it is a far more unsatisfactory piece of legislation than has been asserted by most members of the opposition thus far. The Crimes Amendment (Bail and Sentencing) Bill 2006 reflects an attack on some of the most fundamental understandings of human nature that ought to underpin the criminal law. I speak in this debate from the perspective of having been a long-serving member of the legal profession who commenced his career as a prosecutor then spent three years in Papua New Guinea, including a period as Dean of the Law School at the University of Papua New Guinea working on issues of tribal violence in the highlands, and who worked for a year as principal solicitor for the Aboriginal Legal Service in New South Wales. So I feel some capacity to make judgements about the merits or otherwise of propositions of criminal law. It seems to me quite absurd that, when we deal with our relationship to a conquered race, which the Aboriginal people are in this country—a people who were pushed and dispossessed from their lands by a successful invasion of which I am the successful and proud present representative—we do not understand that we have to treat the original inhabitants of our nation with some respect for their traditional culture and norms. Picture a different society—one where the Indigenous community was not so displaced. Take my example of Papua New Guinea, where I taught and worked for three years. In that community a proposition such as the one being put forward today would be regarded as entirely absurd. Customary law is part of the underlying law of Papua New Guinea. It must be, because the thinking and conduct of people is fundamentally determined by those customary obligations. And any criminal justice system that does not take those customary obligations into account simply does not connect with that world-living reality in which those people live. The legal system in Papua New Guinea, of course, recognises cultural norms—not to forgive conduct that the parliament of Papua New Guinea has chosen to criminalise, which may or may not have been criminal under customary arrangements, but to recognise that moral fault diminishes or increases in accordance with the circumstances in which a person engages and has relationships with that legal system. We forget that in enacting our criminal law we embed in our criminal law all our customary understandings and practices. Our criminal law does not need to have specific provisions which relate to our customary understandings and those things which we respect and condone because it is embedded in the legal system we enact. But when we are passing laws that have an impact on others who have a different cultural background, whose lands we have invaded and whose people we have pushed aside, are we to pretend that they must suddenly emerge and have no connection whatsoever with their previous cultural norms, particularly when some of those people—only a handful, admittedly, but nonetheless some—still have no greater contact with the newly introduced systems of laws than do some people in Papua New Guinea? I defy anybody in this House to imagine a different regime coming to this country and pushing us aside—a community, say, of Germans, Japanese or Chinese. If they became the political class that ruled this country and made a new set of laws, and then said of everything we took for granted—such as marriage, our cultural norms, those rights that we hold dear, the carriage of our religious responsibilities and the like—that none of those things could be taken into account when moral fault was being judged, we would regard that as quite tragic and unthinkable. We do not face those circumstances, but Aboriginal Australians do. Aboriginal Australians face that every day. I do not have any time for this re-myth making that this government is engaged in. The government cheerfully attacks the approach of former governments. It says the former government was too interested in rights rather than responsibilities. Let us be fair about it: we should be more interested in rights because the remnant populations that we have so dispossessed have been denuded of everything of great value in most instances, treated in the abominable way that they have been in the past, given no citizenship rights, no right of vote, deprived of their property, treated as chattel, chained and imprisoned—and then we are told we are more concerned about redressing rights than we are in relation to responsibilities. Well, cop me: I plead guilty. I am more interested in redressing rights. And if you wish to call me ‘black armband’ in relation to my historical understanding, let me say that the black band has slipped upwards in this government’s hands and now covers its eyes. It is a black mask government. It cannot see what is in front of its face because it chooses not to see it. In every settler society—South America and every other settler society—the colonial powers had contempt for the indigenous peoples that they usurped. In some societies that has changed fundamentally. In our neighbour, New Zealand, for example, at least the indigenous Maori people have representation in the parliament as of right. There are Maori seats. But we give our Indigenous people no direct and as of right political representation. In other societies treaties have been made with indigenous people to confer upon them inalienable rights because of a recognition of past wrongdoing. In societies where the invasion was not such as to turn the displaced populations into a tiny minority amongst the invading class, political revolutions have occurred—as they are now occurring in South America, where the Indian populations which were made subservient are regaining political power. This is much resented in many instances but it is nonetheless occurring. But in Australia we are going backwards under this government. We are going backwards, and our want of respect or even self-knowledge in this debate is something I find extraordinary. Self-determination is not a word that you throw around pejoratively. It is something we all value; it is not something to hold in contempt. The member for Ryan mentioned the contribution of my friend and colleague Senator Evans, who made the point that during the Labor years we may have given too great an emphasis to self-determination at the expense of some of the practical measures that are necessary to rebuild the strength of Indigenous communities that we now wish to balance up. But that should not be at the expense of self-determination. When we seek to balance up something, it does not mean throwing away the part that was previously given the greatest emphasis. We need to establish a process that gives Indigenous people a place at the table in the public discourse of Australia. Fair enough: this government has thrown out ATSIC. It says it was a failure. But what representative body has it put in its place to enable Indigenous Australians to play an effective democratic role at the table of discourse of our democracy? None. It is fair enough to criticise the measures that the previous government put in place as being inadequate, but then this government comes along and takes an instance such as Mutitjulu and allows a storm of grossly misleading information to be portrayed as if it is the normative behaviour of Indigenous Australians. It puts forward this legislation as if there is a need to change the law because all Aboriginal people are somehow engaged in sexual, anal intercourse with 14-year-old girls. That is the implication that we are left to hold out to the electorate of Ryan that is said to support this government. We are pandering to a misapprehension. We are pandering to this black mask phase of political misunderstanding of our own history rather than facing up to our genuine responsibilities to fellow citizens who come from a different background to us. Indigenous Papua New Guineans come from many different sets of understanding because there are many different cultures in Papua New Guinea, just as there are amongst Indigenous, Aboriginal communities. There is not a single Indigenous culture. This law is not being brought forward because the government can point to any instance where it is needed. It cannot point to one single instance where an injustice, ultimately, has been perpetrated. The Attorney-General was challenged to do so. What was raised by the member for Ryan was a first-instance judgement of a single judge in the Northern Territory. A decision was made and a prosecution appeal was lodged; the appeal was upheld. The sentence was substantially increased. We did not need this legislation to have that effect. The Attorney was challenged by the question: what instance of error can you point to that this legislation is intended to redress? None was brought forward. When I say of the member for Ryan that the motive for this is far more heinous than simply grabbing a headline, I think that the motive for this is to, again, blame the black victims for the circumstances in which they find themselves, without any capacity for this parliament and the community to truly examine where our own responsibilities lie. We have a situation now, nearly 15 years after the black deaths in custody report, where the number of Indigenous people in prison is higher than it was at the time of that royal commission. We have a situation where the life expectancy of Indigenous people in this country is less as a proportion of the life expectancy of non-Indigenous society than it was at the time of the royal commission into deaths in custody. We have a situation in this country where Australians have turned away from their responsibilities to address issues of rights, issues of self-determination and the hard questions that actually go to how we own and possess the land on which we stand, because this government says, ‘We will treat everybody alike,’ forgetting that the starting point was our dispossession of a people that lived on this land for 40,000 years before we arrived. If we were in a situation such as that of Papua New Guinea and the Indigenous population—the Aboriginal people of this country—were still in a majority and had the vote, these kinds of debates would be simply unthinkable. The question would be our—that is, the European minority’s—cultural interests. How do we protect them adequately from the rights of a majority? We have been so successful in the invasion which our forbears implemented, and I am proud of those successes. I now stand in this parliament; but because we were so successful at marginalising and disempowering Aboriginal people, members can stand up here and speak the sort of nonsense that the member for Ryan spoke. I do not think there was any malice in the member for Ryan. I think he was genuine in imagining that I might say something favourable about this legislation because of my legal background. But our legal system should be fundamentally predicated on dealing with all persons accused of crime and found guilty of crime on individualised merit, on punishment according to their moral culpability, and with the hope of redemption through their reform. Redemption through reform is not always possible. We know that not everybody who commits crimes and is punished reforms. We try to make the punishment fit the crime, but the punishment has to fit the person who commits the crime. To do otherwise is a complete and utter abrogation of this parliament’s responsibility. This legislation has been advanced because of a political storm, created in the media, whipped up by this government and then brought forward through COAG and SCAG processes, which I hold in deep contempt. I say that for my fellow Labor attorneys and heads of government who participated in them. This basically racist approach is one which I will not allow myself to permit to pass in this parliament without the strongest possible objection. It is wrong, it is unprincipled and it remains unprincipled in whosever mouth it is spoken. It is against every recommendation of every law reform commission in this country. It goes against the Law Reform Commission reports established on Aboriginal customary law about 30 years ago in the previous Whitlam government. It goes against Law Reform Commission reports commissioned in the life of the current government. It goes against the New South Wales Law Reform Commission. It goes against the leading legal bodies of this country. I return briefly to what was said by the current President of the Law Council of Australia, Tim Bugg, who said, when calling on the government not to proceed with this bill: Courts must have access to all available sentencing and bail options, particularly when dealing with Indigenous offenders ... implementing the Bill in its present form would seriously undermine the ability of courts to exercise practical judicial alternatives. It is a matter of grave regret, in my hands, that I speak in the way that I do. But how is it that we in this parliament give any comfort to this kind of legislation? It will not matter a jot in most instances. It would be rare that these provisions were called upon, and certainly never in the kinds of extreme cases that are thrown up by the hypotheses of the government who throw up instances of abuses of women and children as though they are tolerated under Aboriginal cultural norms. As someone who has worked in societies and places where there is an Indigenous minority operating under a largely Westminster legal system—as in Papua New Guinea—I have learnt to recognise the way in which you can incorporate proper respect for Indigenous customary law and respect for a legal system, while making certain that victims are not placed in a situation where they are left without remedies or abused, at the same time recognising cultural norms that apply in Indigenous society. As someone who worked for the Aboriginal Legal Service, I am well aware that we have gone backwards in all our discussions in relation to Indigenous rights. We have gone backwards in black deaths in custody, we have gone backwards in setting up representative organisations for Indigenous peoples, we have destroyed elective bodies that represented Aboriginal people and we have cut across the opportunities for Indigenous people to exercise economic self-determination. Now we find that even champions the government has used to hide behind—such as Mr Pearson—are walking away, realising that this government truly had no interest. If you read what Mr Pearson is saying now about the way in which this government has misused his heartfelt sense that Aboriginal people need to take greater personal responsibility—of course a view we would agree with—we see that it is now being used so that we surrender our responsibility. A view from an Aboriginal elder who says, ‘We as a community must exercise greater self-responsibility,’ is being used by the government wrongly, cheaply and in a racist way to say that we have no responsibility, and that I utterly condemn. 74 17:04:00 Garrett, Peter, MP HV4 Kingsford Smith ALP 0 0 Mr GARRETT —I want to very strongly endorse the comments made by the member for Denison, who preceded me in this debate. There is absolutely no question that the situation which Aboriginal people face in this country—and the way in which the federal government has chosen to develop and deliver policy—has seen not only their rights but also their interests and their prospects in many instances substantially diminished, not the least of which is the mischief and the narrowing of debate that is clearly evident in this Crimes Amendment (Bail and Sentencing) Bill 2006. Late last year, the Minister for Justice and Customs, Senator Ellison, announced the winners of the Australian Crime and Violence Prevention Awards, which recognise ‘the most outstanding projects that prevent or reduce crime and violence in Australia’. Two of the recipients of this award were Circle Sentencing Nowra and the Shepparton Koori Court. It goes without saying that both of these courts and both of these processes (a) are successful, (b) have been recognised as outstanding examples of improving community safety and (c) clearly were not in the minds of the drafters of this odious legislation. A Four Corners investigation into circle sentencing, which included examining Circle Sentencing Nowra, highlighted the cause of much Indigenous violence as a result of systemic issues surrounding overcrowding, substance abuse and chronic unemployment, all of which led to low self-esteem and the triggering of antisocial behaviour. The recognition by the Minister for Justice and Customs of the success of those initiatives begs the question: if the government is handing out awards to programs which embrace the concept of circle sentencing, why then would it introduce a bill which effectively diminishes their capacity to offer new ways of reducing recidivism among Indigenous people? The Crimes Amendment (Bail and Sentencing) Bill seeks to amend the bail and sentencing provisions within the Crimes Act by placing a requirement on the court to consider the potential impact on victims when assessing bail conditions, by deleting the reference to cultural background and by specifying that customary law or cultural practice not be taken into account for Commonwealth offences. It is a deplorable piece of legislation. It must be noted at the outset that there is no capacity under the Crimes Act to deal with violent crimes, including murder, assault and rape. So there is a nonsense at play here—a nonsense under which lies a much more odious intention. These sorts of crimes quite clearly fall under the jurisdiction of state and territory laws. Additionally, under the current arrangements, customary law or cultural practice is not deemed a valid defence in determining guilt or innocence. To suggest otherwise is a nonsense, but it is also spurious and inflammatory. The inserted section 15AB lists the impact on victims or witnesses in granting bail as a necessary requirement in deliberations. There would appear to be some merit in this measure, and I note a number of the submissions to the Senate inquiry supported this move. Following the Council of Australian Governments meeting on 14 July this year, it was agreed that the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General report to the next COAG meeting on the extent to which bail provisions and enforcement take particular account of potential impacts on victims and witnesses in remote communities and to recommend any changes required, and that seemed to be a fairly sensible way of proceeding. But now the government is introducing a bill of this sort before members of the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General can report on the matter. What possible reason is there for the government to do this? Clearly, the government is not interested in developing purposeful policy; it is simply playing politics with Indigenous people. The second amendment the government is introducing is the removal of cultural background, which appears in section 16A(2) and currently can be taken into consideration as ‘relevance’ allows—the important term here is ‘relevance’—but it would appear that the government has conveniently neglected to note this. During the second reading debate the government blasted the idea that the offender’s cultural background should automatically be considered when a court is sentencing that offender so as to mitigate the sentence imposed. It is here that the government is attacking the player and not the ball, because it knows full well that cultural background is only taken into consideration when relevant and known to the court. It is not a blanket consideration. To suggest otherwise is completely wrong. The issue of customary law and its rightful place in the criminal justice system has been raised previously in this House and the government has been flying a kite on this issue. The member for Stirling introduced a private member’s bill reaffirming that cultural practices in any community do not lessen the full protection of Australian law. The member’s reaffirmation of the blindingly obvious came as a result of deeply worrying stories of abuse and assault in some Indigenous communities—stories that concern all Australians. That he was prepared to suggest cultural practices or customary law lessened the protection of members of these communities amounted to a complete misrepresentation both of customary law and of the judicial process. I spoke in that debate, and I referred the member to a case in the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory—the Queen v James Goutjawuy Gondarra—where the accused was additionally held accountable for his actions by the cultural law processes of his elders. Consequently he showed real signs of remorse and, as a consequence of that, the first steps towards positive rehabilitation took place. As is always the case in issues of sentencing before a court, and in the circumstances in which an offender is charged and brought before the court, there are a range of different and differing circumstances that attach. The most important matter that must be dealt with is for justice not only to be done but to be seen to be done and for the offender, if found guilty, to be made aware of the significance of the offence, to show remorse and contrition and to be a positive prospect for rehabilitation. In this case, customary law—and the access to customary law—did not lessen the full protection of the law; in fact, it was beneficial. Customary law was a part of the treatment. The community which, hitherto, had borne some of the brunt of his actions was now in a position to ensure that his actions would not be repeated and that he was in a position to realise the seriousness of them. That surely is the purpose of an application of that kind in those circumstances. This leads us to considering the role of judicial discretion in sentencing. There will be some variety in the way in which judges, when sentencing, exercise their discretion. And, of course, there is always the prospect of appeal. A concern arising from the bill is that the preservation of judicial discretion could be undermined, and I think that is a legitimate concern. The Australian Law Reform Commission takes the following view: ... the consideration of traditional laws and customs to explain an offender’s reasons or motives for committing the offence is merely one factor to be considered in the sentencing process. That is to say cultural background, where relevant, can be useful in determining a sentence. Further, the Law Reform Commission noted: The weight to be attached to the factor always should be a matter for the court’s discretion, consistent with the application of Australia’s obligations under international law and our own human rights instruments. It is clear that, by removing the term ‘cultural background’ from the list of matters the court should take into consideration when sentencing, the government is attempting to reduce the judicial discretion that that, hitherto, would have obtained. When the Crimes Act 1914 was amended in 1994 to incorporate the term ‘cultural background’ there was bipartisan support. The then Attorney-General, the Hon. Daryl Williams, noted: It is, however, a relevant consideration to be weighed by the court at the stage in which an accused has already been found guilty. So what has changed, we might well ask, since 1994? Indeed, the current member for Fisher, Mr Slipper, stated during the second reading debate of the Crimes and Other Legislation Bill 1994:  … the opposition— the Liberal-National coalition— certainly is not opposed to the inclusion of cultural background as a relevant matter to be taken into account by the court when sentencing federal offenders. Does the member for Fisher still hold this view? And do other members, who presumably nodded in assent at the time? The 1994 amendment included inserting a reference to cultural background when determining a sentence in section 16A as well as with the discharge of offenders without proceeding to conviction in section 19B. The explanatory memorandum to that amendment stated: As with section 16A, the Australian Law Reform Commission report on multiculturalism and the law recommended that an offender’s cultural background be included in the list of matters which the court should take into account in determining whether to proceed to a conviction. This clause implements that recommendation. However, when the government first drafted this new bill the reference to cultural background was to be deleted only from section 16A, which relates to sentencing. The government has now at least recognised the inconsistency in its approach to section 19B. While the Crimes Amendment Bill amended the act by removing the term ‘cultural background in relation to sentencing’, the government obviously saw no initial problems with its continued inclusion with regard to deciding whether to dismiss charges or discharge an offender before seeking a conviction. Such hypocrisy! It really does highlight the policy-on-the-run attitude of the government that we have seen in many other areas in relation to Indigenous affairs. I refer in passing to the prospects of the COAG trials at Wadeye which have been shown to produce more red tape and deliver very few additional government services despite the government’s rhetoric to the contrary. It is for these reasons that I have outlined and more that Labor opposes the bill. Whilst the government argues that the intention of this legislation is to tackle the problem of violence, substance abuse and recidivism amongst members of Indigenous communities, there is nothing in the bill that substantially delivers anything like solutions to the many problems that Indigenous communities face. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Tom Calma, has stated: Despite the recent media frenzy about the problem of violence in indigenous communities, so far there’s been no serious discussion about whether the Government’s claim—that the Crimes Amendment Bill 2006 will help address this issue—stacks up. The bill is yet another attempt to paper over the very real and difficult issues that contribute to Indigenous disadvantage and Indigenous crime in this country. The problems faced by Indigenous communities are clear, and a quick review of these is instructive in the context of the legislation before us. The Social Justice Report 2005 provided a stark view of the conditions faced by this country’s original inhabitants. The report quotes ‘slow and inconsistent’ progress on Indigenous health issues described by the commissioner, as illustrated by the gap of approximately 17 years between Indigenous and non-Indigenous life expectancy. Age specific death rates for Indigenous people are about double those for non-Indigenous people—a terrible statistic. Indigenous babies are twice as likely to be of low birthweight as non-Indigenous babies, infant mortality rates are three times higher amongst Indigenous infants and rates of many communicable diseases are up to 93 times higher than in non-Indigenous populations. Two recent reports from the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research found that since 1991 the rate of Indigenous imprisonment has surged by almost 55 per cent, with the past six years experiencing a rise of 23 per cent. It cannot merely be a function of the criminal justice system and our approach to Indigenous disadvantage that we simply sit by and witness ever-increasing numbers of young Aboriginal males being incarcerated. There were many submissions to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs that were critical of the government’s approach. In the government’s haste to rush the bill through parliament, a number of submissions made the point that there was little or no consultation with relevant stakeholders. The North Australian Justice Agency pointed to ‘a lack of integrity in the government’s timetable for consultation on the proposed amendments’. The Attorney-General’s Department even admitted that there was no direct consultation outside of the intergovernmental summit. It is policymaking on the run without consultation of the communities whom it affects. It is not acceptable. Other submissions to the Senate committee highlighted the lack of a coherent approach to the issue of violence in Indigenous communities. Many were concerned that the government appeared to be under the impression that the Crimes Act was a suitable legislative tool for tackling crimes currently dealt with by state and territory legislation. The Law Council of Australia made clear: The bill will have immediate impact only in relation to Commonwealth offences and not directly in relation to issues of particular concern identified in the explanatory memorandum—that is, high levels of violence and child abuse in indigenous communities.’ As of September 2006, of those people incarcerated as federal prisoners, around three-quarters were convictions concerning drug importation. Of the 74 prisoners convicted under the Crimes Act, over half were in relation to social security fraud. Catholic Social Services Australia argued: It is incumbent on the Commonwealth government to ensure that any legislative action it develops in response to the July 2006 COAG communiqué is measured, is just and is not liable to have unintended consequences which might further disadvantage some of the most vulnerable people in the Australian community.’ On the face of it, and when we look at the detail, this bill does not conform to any of those criteria. The government’s ambivalence regarding the link between customary law and guilt or innocence was also noted. Professor Weisbrot from the Australian Law Reform Commission stated that customary law as a defence ‘never works’; however, it can be useful in determining an ‘appropriate sentence’. But it is clear that the bill does not introduce a single concrete measure to tackle the source of much of the violence in Indigenous communities, and the Social Justice Commissioner eloquently made that point. He said: If we are putting all of our hope on this amendment to address and change family violence, I think this is misconceived. It will do nothing to address any of those issues.’ Nor does the bill reflect the findings of a number of inquiries into customary law and the Australian legal system. In fact, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission argues that it is in conflict with all major inquiries into the issue, including five Australian Law Reform Commission reports. The bill is also in conflict with the bipartisan support shown in 1994 when a requirement was inserted into the Crimes Act that the courts take into consideration cultural background when determining sentence. Under the weight of all those opinions, why does the government persist with this bill? It is also at odds with the findings of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which were quite specific in saying that we need to reduce the Aboriginal prison population and that Aboriginal cultural practice should be taken into account when determining sentences, as a part of that. Critically, the introduction of circle sentencing or Koori courts—where customary law and customary practice, it has to be said, are taken into account—has benefited many communities, including Dubbo, Nowra and Shepparton. Based in part on a model initiated in Canada, circle sentencing allows local community members, in conjunction with a magistrate, to discuss and determine the appropriate sentence for an offender. Circle sentencing has been a constructive development in the towns in which it operates. A concern raised during the committee process is that this bill has the capacity to undermine much of the good work that has been done. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner pointed out that the bill undermines important initiatives such as circle sentencing and Koori courts, which have been sought in order to engage with aspects of Indigenous culture, customary law and practice in a positive way. These initiatives have been reported as having a positive effect on repeat offending, and they should be supported not undermined. But the fact is that, with this flawed legislation, if the bill is passed it will have real and negative consequences for initiatives like circle sentencing, which have had such a positive effect on many Indigenous communities. It will do nothing to tackle the very serious issues it purports to remedy. This bill will not halt the violence experienced by Indigenous people living in remote communities. Importantly, there is no scope within the bill, or from what the government has shown in other policy areas, to address the root causes of this abuse. The bill does not deserve the support of the House. There is nothing in this bill to address Indigenous poverty, substance abuse, low levels of education or the appalling health conditions faced by many Indigenous people. It is contrary to all the recommendations of those eminent and legal experts who have addressed and considered this issue in the past, including in a bipartisan way members of this parliament in the past as well. It is time for the Howard government to make a solid commitment to eradicate Indigenous disadvantage and not bring forward legislation as odious as this, which we oppose. (Time expired) 79 17:24:00 Ruddock, Philip, MP 0J4 Berowra LP Attorney-General 1 0 Mr RUDDOCK —in reply—Firstly, I thank the members who contributed to this debate on the Crimes Amendment (Bail and Sentencing) Bill 2006. When I spoke earlier in the day, I tabled an explanatory memorandum. I am informed that I should in fact table a revised explanatory memorandum which has some additions relating to the Senate’s consideration of this measure. This bill, and the additional amendments I have foreshadowed that I will move in the consideration in detail stage, is consistent with the intent of the Council of Australian Governments agreement following the Intergovernmental Summit on Violence and Child Abuse in Indigenous Communities. Criminal behaviour cannot in any way be excused, justified or authorised, required or rendered less serious because of customary law or cultural practice—that is the question of principle—nor has it ever been intended that a customary law or cultural practice aggravate the seriousness of a criminal behaviour. This bill forms one element in our approach to addressing these difficult issues. I would not suggest, as did the member who just spoke, that the bill contains all of the answers. It was never intended that it would, but it is part of a total mosaic. At the Intergovernmental Summit on Violence and Child Abuse in Indigenous Communities we called upon all Australian jurisdictions to take action against the perpetrators of violence and abuse, and we will continue to work with the states to improve Australia’s justice system and to encourage them to make similar changes to their sentencing and bail provisions. By amending the bail and sentencing provisions of the Crimes Act, the Commonwealth is demonstrating leadership in the area of law and order, and it will continue to improve the criminal justice system for all Australians, in this case especially for Indigenous Australians who are victims of violence or sexual abuse. This measure will not, and nobody has ever argued that it will, deal with the substantive issues that are crimes at a state or territory level. Those matters have to be dealt with in those jurisdictions at those levels. But I can imagine what would have been said if we had not moved to deal with these issues. We would have been accused of hypocrisy for leaving measures in Commonwealth legislation that we were asking the states and territories to remove. Even though I do not imagine that the Commonwealth offences in the Crimes Act would apply with any frequency to Indigenous people, you cannot have, in my view, model arrangements which you ask the states to implement being ignored by the Commonwealth. As I mentioned, this bill is about leadership. We are about encouraging the states and territories to follow suit and to fulfil their commitment arising from COAG. We are putting the issue of whether customary law and cultural background can be used as an excuse or justification for criminal behaviour beyond doubt. At the summit, the government committed to a range of practical measures intended to address the serious issues of violence and abuse in Indigenous communities. This bill complements those practical measures. I notice that the member for Denison, who has just joined us, seemed to be critical of the outcome of the summit. RH4 Kerr, Duncan, MP Mr Kerr —Very. 0J4 Ruddock, Philip, MP Mr RUDDOCK —That is very interesting because he is demonstrating a willingness to be critical of his state Labor Party colleagues on some issues. I just wish he would be as vocal on a number of other issues. I would hope he would be different from his leader, who seems to see a lot of the conduct at the state and territory level as mere peccadilloes. In my view they were substantial issues—in fact, in some cases requiring the resignation of ministers and, in my view, requiring the resignation of other ministers. It has been argued that this bill is premature because it is still under consideration by SCAG and COAG. Let me put beyond doubt that COAG did decide to improve the effectiveness of the bail provisions. It asked the standing committee to provide a report. We are taking action to implement the COAG decision through the proposed legislative amendments, and we will be reporting on these actions back to COAG through the SCAG process. The government is also undertaking bilateral negotiations with state and territory governments in relation to the outcomes, and in these discussions the state and territory governments are being encouraged to follow our lead and to make similar amendments. We do not see any need to wait. We think these issues are particularly important. It has been suggested that this bill interferes with innovations in sentencing Indigenous offenders, including circle sentencing, and that it is discriminatory in that sense. This bill does not limit any sentencing options available to a court. The government supports alternative sentencing and restorative justice processes. However, it does not support offenders receiving a lesser penalty by reason of a belief in customary law or cultural practices. Accordingly, any sentencing processes must ensure that all Australians are treated equally. Circle sentencing is about the process of setting up an appropriate sentence; it is not about ensuring that cultural background can be used to reduce the seriousness of the criminal conduct. The advice that the government has on that matter in terms of the Racial Discrimination Act is that the bill is consistent with it. It has been suggested that this bill runs counter to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. The recommendations of the royal commission were extensive. There were 339 in all and they covered a broad range of issues. The government is taking a balanced approach in relation to the needs of victims and communities. The royal commission recommendations most relevant to the bill include recommendations 89, 90, 91 and 242, which relate to bail. The proposed legislative amendments will not directly affect any of the actions taken to respond to recommendations 89, 90, 91 or 242. There was no suggestion in the royal commission report that Aboriginal offenders should receive more lenient sentences due to their cultural background. In fact, the government is delivering on a range of programs and services to Indigenous Australians to address Indigenous disadvantage. It has been suggested by Senator Ludwig that we have not moved in relation to his private member’s bill on victim impact statements. Let me just say that victim impact statements will be considered in the context of our response to the Australian Law Reform Commission report on sentencing. We think this bill responds to a very real issue in relation to violence, particularly violence against women and children in Indigenous communities, where we need to put beyond doubt that there is any particular cultural practice either real or imagined that justifies conduct of that sort. I am surprised that so many people would be on the record as wanting to oppose measures to achieve this outcome. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. 81 Bill—by leave—taken as a whole. 81 17:33:00 Ruddock, Philip, MP 0J4 Berowra LP Attorney-General 1 0 Mr RUDDOCK —by leave—I table a supplementary explanatory memorandum in relation to amendments (1) to (5) and I move: (1)    Schedule 1, page 5 (after line 4), after item 5, insert: 5A  Subparagraph 19B(1)(b)(i) Omit “cultural background,”. 5B  After subsection 19B(1) Insert:       (1A)    However, the court must not take into account under subsection (1) any form of customary law or cultural practice as a reason for:               (a)    excusing, justifying, authorising, requiring or lessening the seriousness of the criminal behaviour to which the offence relates; or               (b)    aggravating the seriousness of the criminal behaviour to which the offence relates.        (1B)    In subsection (1A): criminal behaviour includes:               (a)    any conduct, omission to act, circumstance or result that is, or forms part of, a physical element of the offence in question; and               (b)    any fault element relating to such a physical element. (2)    Schedule 1, page 5, after proposed item 5B, insert: 5C  Paragraph 23WI(3)(c) Omit “age, physical and mental health, cultural background and (where appropriate) religious beliefs”, substitute “age, physical health and mental health”. 5D  Paragraph 23WI(3)(d) Repeal the paragraph. 5E  At the end of section 23WI Add:          (4)    Without limiting the matters that the constable may take into account in considering, for the purposes of paragraph (3)(e), the intrusiveness of the forensic procedure, the constable must (where appropriate) take into account the religious beliefs of the suspect. (3)    Schedule 1, page 5, after proposed item 5E, insert: 5F  Paragraph 23WO(3)(c) Omit “age, physical and mental health, cultural background and (where appropriate) religious beliefs”, substitute “age, physical health and mental health”. 5G  Paragraph 23WO(3)(d) Repeal the paragraph. 5H  At the end of section 23WO Add:          (4)    Without limiting the matters that the senior constable may take into account in considering, for the purposes of paragraph (3)(e), the intrusiveness of the forensic procedure, the senior constable must (where appropriate) take into account the religious beliefs of the suspect. (4)    Schedule 1, page 5, after proposed item 5H, insert: 5J  Paragraph 23WT(3)(c) Omit “age, physical and mental health, cultural background and (where appropriate) religious beliefs”, substitute “age, physical health and mental health”. 5K  Paragraph 23WT(3)(d) Repeal the paragraph. 5L  At the end of section 23WT Add:          (4)    Without limiting the matters that the magistrate may take into account in considering, for the purposes of paragraph (3)(f), the intrusiveness of the forensic procedure, the magistrate must (where appropriate) take into account the religious beliefs of the suspect. (5)    Schedule 1, item 6, page 5 (line 9), omit “items 4 and 5”, substitute “items 4 to 5L”. criminal behaviour includes: In relation to these amendments, which I spoke to in the second reading debate, the question was raised during the debate on the bill in the Senate as to why section 16A and not 19B of the Crimes Act was being amended. Also, the sentencing part of the Crimes Act was not being amended. The government considered the position and agreed that it was not consistent to amend one and not the other. Both sections deal with sentencing of Commonwealth offenders. In our view, it is not appropriate in either case that there be a specific reference to cultural background, and the proposed amendments will make changes to section 19B to parallel those already made to 16A. In relation to the measures dealing with forensic procedure provisions, in our view the cultural background of a suspect should not be a factor used to determine whether or not they provide a forensic sample. It is not acceptable that there be a possibility, even a remote one, that a person from one ethnic group may avoid undergoing a procedure which provides evidence which may lead to their prosecution or conviction in circumstances where a person from another group would have no choice but to undergo testing. There are issues in relation to religious beliefs which we are leaving intact. There is a difference between a person’s cultural background and their deeply held personal beliefs. It is clearly appropriate to take the latter into account in deciding how that person should be dealt with under law enforcement processes. That might apply to Indigenous people in the same way as it would to others. It needs to be borne in mind that there will be a range of options available for collecting DNA samples. If a person has a deeply held religious belief and that should be a factor in deciding which of those options were used, then the provisions will be amended to ensure that religious belief is only relevant to deciding what type of testing is to be carried out, not whether there should be testing in the first place. For instance, some people for religious reasons do not believe that a sample of blood should be taken. A DNA sample might be able to taken in a less intrusive way and still achieve the same outcome. We think that draws the appropriate balance between protecting deeply held beliefs while still enforcing the criminal law in a fair way. Why are we taking out Aboriginal customary beliefs? In our view, there is no need to keep the current references to Aboriginal customary beliefs in DNA testing. We have clear advice that the term ‘religious beliefs’ is wide enough to encompass deeply held personal beliefs of a kind that should not be taken into account under the provisions. Whatever specific religion those are based on, the term is wide enough to pick up beliefs based on Aboriginal religion as well as any other religion. The change will make the point that all that is relevant under those provisions is a deeply held personal belief, and that will avoid any argument as in the case of Aboriginal suspects that there are other matters that should be taken into account. Removing the reference to Aboriginal customary or cultural beliefs will avoid any potential ambiguity. In summary, the amendments will make certain that a court cannot take into account any form of customary law or cultural practice as a reason for lessening or aggravating the seriousness of the criminal behaviour that a court is considering and that customary law and cultural practice cannot be used as a basis for avoiding DNA testing. I commend the amendments to the House. 83 17:37:00 Roxon, Nicola, MP 83K Gellibrand ALP 0 0 Ms ROXON —Labor oppose these amendments, and I would like to record our opposition. We will be voting against the Crimes Amendment (Bail and Sentencing) Bill 2006 in its entirety and we oppose the specific amendments. We understand why the government is moving the first amendment; it is doing this on the basis that it is better to have a bad, consistent law than a bad, inconsistent law. But, make no mistake about it, this amendment does not actually improve the law in any way. We are opposed to the removal of the reference to cultural background in bail and sentencing procedures, as I have already indicated, as has been indicated in the Senate and as has been indicated by many other speakers. Amendment (1) is an amendment to the procedure—in this case, when it is a discharge after conviction—and of course we also oppose this amendment. The reason that the question was raised at all in the Senate was simply to point out in the debate that the true motive for this bill was merely for it to be a diversion from the failures of the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and the exposure of just how sloppy the government’s work had been in preparing and drafting this legislation: one rule for one provision and one rule for another. If the government did actually believe that this bill was about improving the law, then it would have been thorough, much more professional and much more consistent in its drafting, and it would have supplied a written explanatory memorandum that meticulously laid the case for change. I am not sure that the newly tabled explanatory memorandum does that. The government is legislating on the run with these amendments. The Attorney-General has the audacity to mention that the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General is currently reviewing these provisions, but still the Commonwealth wants to act first. The government tries to pretend that it is an act of leadership rather than idiocy to act before any proper consideration of whether or not this will deliver what the government pretends it will. The government even calls it ‘an act of leadership’ because it would be unfair to ask the states to do this if the government were not doing it. It certainly would be unfair: it would be unfair when, despite the spin that the Attorney-General wants to put on the agreement from COAG, all the states have rejected this bill. All the states have indicated that they will not make changes that are consistent with this bill. So this leadership will actually leave the Commonwealth out there on its own, having legislated in a way that really will have very little impact on any Commonwealth criminal activity which is likely to be undertaken. Nevertheless, it wants to use this as an example when it will have no impact on the much more important issue of Indigenous violence and violence in Indigenous communities. Amendments (2), (3) and (4) all deal with forensic procedures and are completely unrelated to the rest of the bill. It seems to me that the government obviously was a little put out by the questions that were raised—perhaps those raised by my colleague Senator Ludwig in the other place—about not being consistent. The government seems to have done a Google search for every time customary law has appeared and has now said that it is going to remove any reference, even in procedures which have nothing to do with bail and sentencing and nothing to do with what the rest of the bill is dealing with, and without any consideration of whether or not it is appropriate to make this removal. It seems to me also quite extraordinary that we can be here at the last minute debating changes that deal with a different section of the act—entirely different procedures such as collecting DNA and other things—having gone through a Senate committee process that did not deal with these provisions at all because they were not even proposed at that time. They have not been talked about within the community and they certainly do not have the cover of any agreement with COAG or SCAG, no matter how far the Attorney wants to stretch it. It seems bizarre to me that the government moves these amendments in such an ill-considered way. It is also quite extraordinary that a number of the speakers on the other side of the House were trying to make some point about the other provisions being introduced by the Keating government. However, they were supported by the previous Attorney-General, Daryl Williams, when he was in this place, and of course the current Minister for Justice and Customs, who has now had a change of heart on this issue. These provisions—the ones that are being amended by amendments (2) to (4)—were actually introduced by this government when it was amending the procedures in 1997. You have speakers on the other side of the House saying, ‘We have to amend these things because of these terrible things that people did under the Keating government,’ and now we have to amend them because of the terrible things that have been done under your government. It is all a complete mess and completely inconsistent. I do not think that there is any argument that is very persuasive for the need to do this. (Extension of time granted) I think it is extraordinary that the previous Attorney-General was prepared to boast at the time of introducing these other provisions relating to forensics, and the model Crimes Amendment (Forensic Procedures) Bill 2000 was widely circulated for comment to about 600 groups and individuals representing many interests. The long list of those consulted included defence lawyers, law societies, civil liberties groups and legal aid organisations. We can contrast that with the current bill: the Senate committee condemned the government for its failure to properly consult in relation to the changes being considered, and these changes we are dealing with now were not even a twinkle in anybody’s eye at that time. What a stark example of how arrogant the government has become after its 10 years in power. The government has completely changed its tune when it comes to involving the wider community in the legislative process. The Prime Minister said he would not let control of the Senate go to his head, but it is quite clear that it has gone to the head of many of his ministers. When the forensic procedures were originally introduced, Mr Williams spoke in this House of the many safeguards in the bills that would protect the rights of individuals, with particular provisions for Aboriginal persons and Torres Strait Islanders. There you have it: the first Attorney-General of the first Howard government promoting specific safeguards for Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders. Here, now, you have the Attorney-General of the last Howard government removing those same safeguards. How the standards seem to have declined since Attorney-General Williams left this place! It is contemptuous of good process, it is contemptuous of the stakeholders and it is contemptuous of what the Senate recommended. I have to say that I also think it is contemptuous of the general liberal beliefs that we now see so rarely in this place. It is certainly contemptuous of the Australian people. Surely there is a better way for us to make laws, and we should do this in a more considered manner. I am also interested in the brief that was provided to us about the latest amendments that the government has just introduced in this place—that is, the government is convinced that it is okay to remove a reference to customary beliefs because, and I am quoting from the government’s brief to the government members committee that was provided to us, that ‘the term religious beliefs encompasses all deeply held personal beliefs’. I think that would be an extraordinary revelation to many of our religious leaders, to think that any strongly held personal view that someone has will be considered a religious view, and I think it is certainly an affront to many people who do not regard themselves as religious who have many strongly held personal views. It is an extremely contentious thing to say that customary beliefs or any other beliefs that people might hold can be caught up in religious beliefs. Maybe there will be another time or place to have a theological debate about whether that is right, but to me it is clear evidence of quite bad law-making for an assertion such as that to be made, for changes to our Crimes Act to be made on the basis of such an assertion, and for customary beliefs—which may well have nothing to do with whether someone has a belief in whether there is a god of any type in another place and may not be able to be referred to in any way as religious beliefs—to be automatically channelled into that reference. I think it is quite extraordinary. But this is not the time or the place to be able to convince the government of that sort of argument. We strongly oppose this bill; we oppose the amendment. We do not think it makes the bill better, and in a number of instances we think it makes it significantly worse, particularly with the addition of changes to the forensic procedures part of the bill. This is an entirely separate part of the bill. It is completely separate to the bail and sentencing provisions, but obviously, if your staff or the department do a search, you are saying, ‘We want to be consistent, so we’ll just consistently make fools of ourselves and take these provisions out of the act.’ We cannot support it; we do not support it. We think the government has hit quite a low point in putting forward such a hastily drafted bill with such poor policy background for it. It will not help Indigenous members of the community; it will not help the broader community. It will just have to be fixed up when we win the next election. 86 17:46:00 Kerr, Duncan, MP RH4 Denison ALP 0 0 Mr KERR —I wish to make a couple of remarks in relation to the amendments to the Crimes Amendment (Bail and Sentencing) Bill 2006. First I want to respond to the comments of the Attorney. I have no shame whatsoever in sharing any blame that is due in relation to the proposals that are currently before the House. I oppose them regardless of whoever’s mouth they have been expressed by. But I am given assurances by the honourable member for Gellibrand that, contrary to my understanding and what I read in the parliamentary brief, in fact the COAG process did not endorse these particular measures, nor are any state governments going to follow them. So to the extent that I have perhaps inadvertently placed blame on my state Labor colleagues, I withdraw it. I thank the Attorney for giving me the opportunity to reflect on that matter and the member for Gellibrand for drawing my attention to that particular matter. But my criticism that any person who proposes a racist piece of legislation of this nature deserves condemnation, be they on the Labor side or on the government side, still stands. Let me ask the Attorney to respond to these propositions and take the debate away from Australian Indigenous practices and cultural norms. An example I became very familiar with in Papua New Guinea—conduct which is entirely unlawful and often results in death and murder—is where people believe in sorcery. Under the customary arrangements and beliefs that exist in those particular communities, people breached the criminal law of Papua New Guinea. It has always been the case that the state of mind of the person influenced by their customary understandings of their obligations is something that is taken into account in relation to sentencing. It would be bizarre if it were not. You cannot sentence somebody who does not believe in sorcery on the same basis as somebody who does believe in sorcery. It is a conundrum beyond all understanding that this government can put forward such a proposition. 0J4 Ruddock, Philip, MP Mr Ruddock interjecting— RH4 Kerr, Duncan, MP Mr KERR —Let us take the Attorney’s example of female circumcision. Let us take that example and examine it. In Australia, we have a number of people who have come as refugees from the Horn of Africa. In the Horn of Africa it is a common cultural practice, as male circumcision is in Australia—abhorrent though it may be to most of us; as a child, I was a victim of the practice of male circumcision—to carry out female circumcision. It is repellent to the views that I hold, it is repellent to the House and we have passed laws which criminalise it. But is it possible to put this proposition in the mouth of the Attorney: that the conduct of a person who comes to Australia, newly familiar with the norms and expectations of this society, and who, in what they understand to be in the best interests of their child, carries out a procedure of that nature is to be treated precisely the same as a criminal who, in an act of wanton cruelty with no such cultural background, with no belief that they are doing it for the benefit of the girl, carries out that act. It is an absurd and nonsensical proposition. One is an act of wanton cruelty deserving of the utmost and most terrible condemnation by our society; the other demands a criminal response because we are seeking to change behaviour and because our criminal law demands that outcome. It cannot treat the two things alike, and yet this legislation does so. It pretends that the parents of that child and their sense of what they believe to be best for the welfare of that particular individual are of no note in their moral responsibility. I do not accept that. I absolutely say that the criminal law should remain the same, as it is in Papua New Guinea with causing death, albeit for whatever reason. But surely there are differences in the appropriate and apt sentence that go towards the nature of the moral responsibility of the perpetrator. To close your eyes to that is simply beyond my understanding, and I would like the Attorney to address those conundrums. Frankly, those are those sorts of conundrums which we hope will not arise in our criminal justice system, but, if they do, they require judges to apply their endeavours to find a just sentence. (Extension of time granted) It is not to condone female genital mutilation, which no member of this House does—certainly to my understanding no member of this House does—that I make the observation that there is a different degree of moral wrongdoing between parents recently arrived from the Horn of Africa who have that cultural underpinning and others who do not. Is it to be differentiated in terms of the impact between one arrival from the Horn of Africa who may say that they undertook that practice out of a religious understanding of their obligation and another who might, for example, be secular but nonetheless believe that it is in the interests of the child because of a cultural underpinning? Is it to be treated as if those circumstances cannot be taken into account? If we are simply changing the words—deleting ‘cultural underpinning’ and inserting ‘religious understanding’ so that the two are synonymous—we change nothing and this government is going through a charade, abusing the responsibilities in its hands to create a sense in the Australian community that it is achieving something of a substantive nature when all it is doing is shifting and juggling the words. Finally, how would the Attorney deal with those cultural underpinnings which have traditionally been part of the European culture? We used to, until recently, for example, have a defence of provocation—I think some states still do—which accepted as part of a reduction in sentence and the definition of murder the fact that someone was so overwhelmed with their passion when they found their partner, for example, having an affair with a person that it reduced their moral culpability. It was built into the offence provisions. We actually have a number of offence provisions in our own law which bear through the way in which we have imposed and embedded our cultural understandings of responsibility and blame in the substantive law. Does the Attorney propose overturning all those provisions? Of course not, because they are our cultural understandings embedded in the law. He merely wishes to overturn those of others. I believe that this law is misplaced and unnecessary. It embarrasses me to stand here in this House and to find the time of this House being taken up in this way for what is essentially a continuation of the abuse of Indigenous Australians, which has been perpetrated for this last decade by a government that is increasingly abnegating its responsibilities and shifting the debate in relation to Aboriginal affairs towards blacks as perpetrators, blacks as offenders and blacks as marginal—not people that have to be incorporated into a larger society through a recognition that they have been dispossessed through the Australian settlement and that we do need to build in structures to build upon, to recognise and to respect Indigenous culture. 87 17:55:00 Roxon, Nicola, MP 83K Gellibrand ALP 0 0 Ms ROXON —I have one more question. It might be more convenient for the Attorney to deal with all of the issues at once. I should have said in our objection to the forensic procedures amendments that are being moved that I would ask in the response whether the Attorney would consider sending those provisions back to the Senate committee. He has, after all, said at other times that the work of the Senate committee has been helpful in being able to advise and improve the laws. We have not had the benefit of their wisdom on these provisions, although we have taken up their time in the others and the government has largely in this case ignored their recommendations. However, it does seem that, if we were going to take the opportunity to make these laws as good as we could, the Attorney might consider referring those provisions to the Senate committee. I do not believe that there is any desperate urgency in this bill being passed today, and I would ask in his response that he consider whether he would agree to that reference. 88 17:56:00 Ruddock, Philip, MP 0J4 Berowra LP Attorney-General 1 0 Mr RUDDOCK —I had a very interesting discussion some years ago with a South Australian Labor member of parliament—her name was Anne Levy; she is probably known to members opposite—about the issue of cultural practices and particularly women’s issues and where the situation ought to lie when they are in conflict. The view was put very strongly to me that there are certain values in the society in regard to which, when cultural practices impact significantly, as they often do on women and children, women and children ought to be given some primacy. I am surprised, particularly in relation to the issue of female genital mutilation, which has far more horrific consequences than the comparable circumcision for males, that it would be seen as something that by reference to cultural practices ought to be treated in a different light however it occurred. I have great difficulty with that. One of the reasons that we want to press these issues is because we believe that, often in a culture that has been largely focused on what I might regard as patrilineal rights and entitlements, it has often meant that the issues that go to the safety of women and children have been neglected. That is one of the reasons we have wanted to provide some leadership in the way in which these issues are being dealt with. I do not believe the issue in relation to DNA testing requires any further review. I have made a decision in relation to the way in which it should operate which merely differentiates the procedures that you might use to take into account religious beliefs. I simply say, as I did in my earlier comments in moving the amendments, that the legal advice I have is that strongly held beliefs of Indigenous people about the way in which they see themselves would be seen as religious beliefs, notwithstanding the fact that there is no reference to a god as we understand it. If you look at the characteristic of religion, some have multiple gods and some a unitary system. Buddha does not even claim to be a god, but Buddhism is nevertheless regarded as a religion. The advice to me is quite clear: Indigenous beliefs would be seen as religious beliefs for interpreting the measure, if this were claimed, in relation to DNA. 88 18:00:00 Kerr, Duncan, MP RH4 Denison ALP 0 0 Mr KERR —I thank the Attorney for his response. I wish to exercise an abundance of caution and ensure that there be no misunderstanding about the position that I have expressed in relation to female genital mutilation. No-one in this House condones it; nobody regards its carrying out on a woman or a child to be acceptable; and everybody in this House has played their part in the passage of those laws. In fact, I recall speaking on that legislation when it was passed. This House has taken a number of stands where it has deliberately intruded into areas where we have complex and overlapping practices of traditional culture and we have said that some are no longer permissible under our law. But the Attorney appears to miss the fundamental thrust of the point I raise, because I have asked for him to consider and respond to this proposition: is there a difference in his mind between a mother, coming recently to Australia from the Horn of Africa, perhaps as a displaced person or refugee, who, believing that it is in the interests of her child, carries out such a procedure—and remember most people who carry out these procedures are women—and a person who, without any such cultural understanding, as an act of cruelty seizes a child and inflicts such a horrible and mutilating wound upon them? I cannot believe that the Attorney says that each must be punished alike. If the Attorney holds such a view, I regard him as not having a moral base. Question agreed to. 10000 McMullan, Bob (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr McMullan)—The question is that the bill, as amended, be agreed to. Question put. 18:06:00 The House divided.     (The Deputy Speaker—Mr McMullan) 83 Abbott, A.J. Anderson, J.D. Andrews, K.J. Bailey, F.E. Baird, B.G. Baker, M. Baldwin, R.C. Barresi, P.A. Bartlett, K.J. Billson, B.F. Bishop, B.K. Bishop, J.I. Broadbent, R. Brough, M.T. Cadman, A.G. Causley, I.R. Ciobo, S.M. Cobb, J.K. Costello, P.H. Dutton, P.C. Elson, K.S. Entsch, W.G. Farmer, P.F. Fawcett, D. Ferguson, M.D. Forrest, J.A. Gambaro, T. Gash, J. Georgiou, P. Haase, B.W. Hardgrave, G.D. Hartsuyker, L. Henry, S. Hockey, J.B. Hull, K.E. * Hunt, G.A. Jensen, D. Johnson, M.A. Jull, D.F. Katter, R.C. Keenan, M. Kelly, D.M. Kelly, J.M. Laming, A. Ley, S.P. Lindsay, P.J. Lloyd, J.E. Macfarlane, I.E. Markus, L. May, M.A. McArthur, S. * McGauran, P.J. Mirabella, S. Moylan, J.E. Nairn, G.R. Nelson, B.J. Neville, P.C. Prosser, G.D. Pyne, C. Randall, D.J. Richardson, K. Robb, A. Ruddock, P.M. Schultz, A. Scott, B.C. Secker, P.D. Slipper, P.N. Smith, A.D.H. Somlyay, A.M. Southcott, A.J. Stone, S.N. Thompson, C.P. Tollner, D.W. Truss, W.E. Tuckey, C.W. Turnbull, M. Vaile, M.A.J. Vale, D.S. Vasta, R. Wakelin, B.H. Washer, M.J. Windsor, A.H.C. Wood, J. 55 Adams, D.G.H. Albanese, A.N. Andren, P.J. Beazley, K.C. Bevis, A.R. Bird, S. Bowen, C. Burke, A.E. Burke, A.S. Byrne, A.M. Crean, S.F. Danby, M. * Edwards, G.J. Elliot, J. Ellis, A.L. Ellis, K. Emerson, C.A. Ferguson, L.D.T. Ferguson, M.J. Fitzgibbon, J.A. Garrett, P. Georganas, S. George, J. Gibbons, S.W. Gillard, J.E. Grierson, S.J. Griffin, A.P. Hall, J.G. * Hatton, M.J. Hayes, C.P. Hoare, K.J. Irwin, J. Kerr, D.J.C. King, C.F. Lawrence, C.M. Livermore, K.F. Macklin, J.L. Melham, D. Murphy, J.P. O’Connor, B.P. O’Connor, G.M. Owens, J. Plibersek, T. Price, L.R.S. Quick, H.V. Ripoll, B.F. Roxon, N.L. Rudd, K.M. Sawford, R.W. Sercombe, R.C.G. Swan, W.M. Tanner, L. Thomson, K.J. Vamvakinou, M. Wilkie, K. Question agreed to. 90 Mr RUDDOCK (Berowra —Attorney-General) 18:11:00 —by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. 90 BILLS R2654 Cognate bill: 90 BILLS R2655 90 Debate resumed from 1 November, on motion by Mr Ruddock: That this bill be now read a second time. 90 18:12:00 Bevis, Arch, MP ET4 Brisbane ALP 0 0 Mr BEVIS —I rise to speak on the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Bill 2006 and the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2006. The objective of these bills is outlined in clause 3 of the legislation. Basically they aim to bring Australia into international compliance in measures to combat money laundering by criminals and the financing of terrorism. This spectrum of regulatory action is known as anti money-laundering counter-terrorism financing, commonly known as the AMLCTF regime. The bills derive their impetus from the OECD’s financial action task force recommendations. Those task force recommendations consisted of 40 recommendations on anti-money-laundering matters and nine special recommendations dealing specifically with counter-terrorism financing. Clause 3 also lists a number of other international obligations and resolutions. After much delay, the government is now legislating to bring Australia into compliance with those FATF regimes—that is, the financial action task force regimes—but doing so in two tranches of legislation. The first tranche is these bills currently before the parliament. They cover financial, gambling and bullion-dealing industries in addition to lawyers and accountants, but only to the extent that they are in competition with the financial industry. The second tranche, which covers other activities of lawyers and accountants as well as the jewellery and real estate industries, is yet to be released. The government has not even announced a target date for the completion of that. Rather than incorporate and amend the existing financial transactions reporting regimes under the Financial Transaction Reports Act 1988, the government has adopted the unwieldy approach of formulating a separate legislative scheme, which the AMLCTF Bill creates. This bill is very timely indeed because, as the name suggests, the bill deals with money laundering and the operation of terrorists and their need for financing. Only yesterday, the Cole commission handed down its report—Report of the inquiry into certain Australian companies in relation to the UN oil for food program—on the AWB. The presentation of this bill today has given me an opportunity to make some comments about the connection between those two. Make no mistake: if the Howard government’s record on money laundering and financing of terrorism was not so soft or weak, Commissioner Cole would have had the option of recommending similar charges against the alleged perpetrators of misconduct to the ones we are now intending to enact in this very bill. Of course, the greatest shame is that the inquiry’s terms of reference were limited only to certain companies in relation to the UN oil for food program. As Commissioner Cole himself noted, in volume 4 at page 21: The Inquiry’s terms of reference do not extend to investigating and reporting on whether the actions or conduct of the Commonwealth, or any of its officers, might have constituted a breach of a law of the Commonwealth, a State or Territory. It has been well canvassed today in question time and by the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Griffith in the censure motion that the government did its best from the outset to restrict the Cole commission’s inquiry to ensure that it could not inquire into those matters. Cole went on to say that, had he become aware of offences by Commonwealth officers detected under his limited terms of reference, he would have investigated. Given those terms of reference, it is no surprise that he found none; they put blinkers on the inquiry and tied both arms behind his back. It is a great failing of this government that, when charged with enforcing sanctions against one of the most evil men of the last generation, the Howard government wilfully—and I believe corruptly or negligently—facilitated or turned a blind eye to some $300 million in payments to the ‘Butcher of Baghdad’. The Howard government would have to be the most morally bankrupt government to hold office in this land. They have been so arrogant that they cannot even smell the stench of corruption that reeks all around them. Indeed, they had the hubris to conduct celebratory drinks yesterday evening to enjoy their moment. E0B Richardson, Kym, MP Mr Richardson —Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I was wondering whether we could get the member for Brisbane to make his comments relevant to the bill. ET4 Bevis, Arch, MP Mr BEVIS —It’s about counter-terrorism; you should have a look at it. 10000 McMullan, Bob (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr McMullan)—The member for Brisbane is within the parameters of the bill. ET4 Bevis, Arch, MP Mr BEVIS —The bill, of course, deals with the financing of terrorist activities. The AWB’s $300 million kickback to Saddam Hussein under the watch of this government and the opportunity that presented for terrorist organisations to get their hands on a tidy sum of money is very much about the financing of terrorism. It is an indication of this government’s disjointed approach to this matter that they can sit there and think that there is no connection between their mismanagement of the AWB scandal and the fact that we are now debating a bill that deals with money laundering and financing of terrorists. Of course there is a connection. That is what the whole Cole inquiry was about. That is why the United Nations sanctions were put in place: to stop money from being provided to those people who perpetrate acts of terror. This bill, had it been in place some time ago, might have afforded the Cole commission the opportunity to recommend charges that are provided for in this bill. I certainly am keen to contain my remarks to the bill, and that is exactly what I have been doing. The story of the bill—which, I have to say, Labor supports—is yet another case of a minister who has been asleep at the wheel. This legislation should have been in place years ago and its provisions should have caught the culprits responsible for the Australian Wheat Board scandal. This bill will hopefully take Australia some of the way towards final compliance with our international obligations. Unfortunately, I have to say ‘some of the way’ and not ‘all of the way’, because even at this late stage it represents only the first of two tranches to reform our woefully outdated laws. We are still waiting on the government to announce even a timetable to bring forward the rest of the reforms. Labor supports the bill but will be moving amendments in the Senate on at least two issues, which I will deal with later, and, I suspect, a range of other issues that might arise as a result of the Senate committee’s investigation and report into this bill. As I am sure the Senate and the House of Representatives are aware, the amendments being introduced to the act by this bill are designed to bring Australia into compliance with important international obligations dealing with the threat of terrorist financing and, more broadly, money laundering activities. Specifically, they will bring us into line with two sets of recommendations released by the Financial Action Task Force, FATF, which is an important international intergovernmental group that has been tasked with the development of standards to combat money laundering for illegal activities, including terrorism. This is a welcome development and one supported by the Labor Party although, as I said, we will be moving amendments to improve aspects of the legislation that we think are deficient. However, it is a development that has been far too long in the making. The history of this bill is one of delays, failed consultations and international embarrassment. It is more than five years after the September 11 attacks. Finally, this sluggish government has now brought a bill before the parliament dealing with these important matters. The Howard government is negligent in leaving Australia inadequately protected from criminals and terrorists who use our financial system to launder money. Only now—five years after 9-11—do we see an implementation of the special recommendations, of which eight of the nine were released in the aftermath of those horrendous attacks in 2001. Furthermore, we should make no bones about the importance of this legislation in the fight against organised crime and terrorism. In 2002, Senator Ellison, in a press release, made pointed reference to that fact when he said that criminals and terrorists: ... will continue to take advantage of jurisdictions where the law enforcement and regulatory powers are the weakest. Of course, he was right. That is exactly what terrorists and criminals will seek to do. That statement was made in 2002. Recommendations were released in 2003. But it is now five years since the September 11 attacks, five years since the recommendations were first released, three years since the revised recommendations were released and three years since the new laws were promised, and only now are we seeing the bill for the first time here in the parliament. That is not the performance of a government in command of the tasks of dealing with money-laundering problems and anti-terrorism financing. Just like Senator Ellison’s handling of the Customs container management re-engineering project, this has become a lesson in how not to implement complex new laws. The first serious problem was the botched consultation process undertaken throughout 2004 and 2005. In fact, the term ‘consultation process’ is too kind a term to use. Industry was not consulted. There was no proper consultation process about these proposed laws, and the government essentially attempted to jam everything into a one-size-fits-all approach. The minister attempted to persevere with that approach and in the middle of 2005 faced the humiliating result of being rolled by cabinet after a concerted campaign by industry and then being told to go back to the drawing board and start again. In 2005 Australia faced the further international humiliation of two reports which slammed our responses to anti money-laundering and counter-terrorism financing. Firstly you had the release in May of that year of a report by the United States State Department in which Australia had the dubious honour of being named alongside Haiti and the Dominican Republic as a ‘major money-laundering country’ and a ‘country of primary concern’, owing to the Howard government’s weak legislative framework. We should contemplate that. The people of Australia would be appalled to know that the negligence of the Howard government resulted in our listing in a United States State Department document as being a major money-laundering country. Bear in mind that it was Senator Ellison who pointed out, quite correctly, that terrorists seeking finance and international criminals wishing to launder money will shift their operations to those jurisdictions with the weakest law. We happen to be in that category alongside the dubious company of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. That was the assessment of our closest ally, the United States. Australia’s status as a soft touch on money laundering and terrorist financing was confirmed later that year following an investigation and the release of a country report by the FATF which found, incredibly, that Australia was fully compliant with only 12 of the 40 general recommendations. But, even more alarmingly, it found that Australia was not compliant with a single solitary one of the nine special recommendations relating to terrorist financing. Our record on the international stage has been an appalling embarrassment and an indictment of the mismanagement that the Howard government has brought to this important issue. Two years after Senator Ellison had promised the laws, the international community gave Australia a big fat zero out of 10. If there is an upside to the international humiliation, it is that it seems to have finally spurred the Howard government into some activity. In the meantime the government has been forced to rush through a number of bandaid solutions to keep up the appearance of compliance with the recommendations. The government’s approach to this legislation has been more like watching a really bad movie that never seems to end rather than any proper process of legislative management and reform. It has been an excruciatingly painful process, when there has been no need for it. It has been compounded by the government’s own errors. The first of these, contained in the Anti-Terrorism Act (No.2) 2005, was passed last year in what can best be described as a slow panic in response to the FATF report. It implemented a number of the FATF recommendations, but before these had even commenced the government was forced to amend a number of these in a later act, the Financial Transaction Reports Amendment Act 2006. It was forced to introduce these amendments because, to quote directly from the government’s own explanatory memorandum: If the amendment to restrict the application of Division 3A of Part II of the FTR Act to ADIs is not made, then certain legitimate non-bank money remitters assert that they could be put out of business. Those are the government’s own words. The government, in its own words, was saying that the legislation that it had presented and put through the parliament was so poorly drafted that it would have put legitimate businesses out of business. That is no real surprise. The government, in answer to questions put on notice at the Senate committee inquiry into the anti-terrorism bill, admitted that it did not consult with industry on the final version of the bill, so it was forced to continue piling bandaid upon bandaid onto the legislation. More than half a decade after the September 11 attacks, the Howard government has decided that it is finally time to bring Australia into line with our international obligations and introduce legislation to attack terrorist funding at its source. As I said before, with some provisos: this is only the first tranche—Labor will be supporting it. There are serious holes left in the regime which we are told the government will fix in further legislation. Labor calls upon the government to release the time frame in which it expects to complete those further reforms. Its track record to date does not give either the Labor Party or affected industry in Australia any great confidence. Until those reforms are completed and Australia is compliant with all the recommendations in all the areas, you have what is essentially a Maginot line. It is a set of scary and imposing defences that on the face of it seem impenetrable but that in actual fact are easily outflanked and circumvented. That is precisely what the government has created here. While these bills are a long overdue step in the right direction, it cannot be emphasised enough that they are only part of what is required. Until Australia completes the second tranche, we are going to be left with the Maginot line. I will now turn to the Senate committee, which I believe is due to table its report into the bill at some point today. I make these remarks without the benefit of having read the report. However, to get some understanding of the issues before the committee, we can turn to the evidence presented in submissions, transcripts and answers to questions. For consultation, we saw industry repeating concerns similar to those it had raised earlier—specifically, I am thinking of the Anti-Terrorism Act. In that case, industry’s concerns were later shown by the amendment of the Financial Transaction Reports Act to be quite valid, because they were not properly consulted on the final text on that occasion. In a similar vein, we saw lacklustre consultation during the early stages of the draft, which resulted in the unusual situation of a minister being rolled in cabinet on his own bill and told to go back and start again. So the consultation process is not a new concern with this bill, and industry has every right to be wary of the perceived lack of consultation so far. I hope that the minister, AUSTRAC and the department have taken some steps to allay the stakeholders’ concerns. Equally, the implementation period of the legislation is of great concern. The bill places an onus on the private sector to monitor and report to AUSTRAC suspicious transactions or transactions over $10,000. So we need to make absolutely sure that the private sector are able to come to grips with the obligations imposed by this bill. The private sector have told the Senate committee, in submissions and hearings, that they need certainty so that they can start building systems and training staff before the legislation comes into effect. In response, the department has indicated that it will have the rules available by 31 March next year. The Labor Party will continue to push for this, particularly given the minister’s track record of not giving industry sufficient time to implement the required changes. I foreshadow that my colleague Senator Ludwig will be moving a range of amendments in the Senate on Labor’s behalf. In addition to such amendments as arise from the committee report, there are two matters I will flag here in the House today. Firstly, Labor will be moving to strike out section 6(7), which gives the power to regulations to effectively override and amend the act. This is what is commonly known as a Henry VIII clause, after the well-known king’s penchant for legislation of that type. Simply stated, it provides the opportunity for legislation passed by the parliament to be changed by subordinate authority. This is not the normal practice of our parliament or, indeed, any parliament in the Westminster system. If legislation needs to be altered, that should be the job of the parliament, not regulations. So we will be moving to strike out that clause. From the point of view of good governance, Henry VIII clauses are always to be opposed unless there are very sound reasons to support their existence. They are of particular concern in this bill given the extensive exemptions and delegations it already contains. The government’s argument for flexibility is, in Labor’s view, not enough to authorise these unusual procedures. Secondly, Labor will be moving an amendment to bring forward the date of review. This is currently set at seven years, which, for a piece of legislation of this complexity, is simply too long. We will be moving amendments to shorten that review period. Let me state again that the Labor Party supports the bill. We will be moving amendments to improve it, but we fundamentally support it, as we have supported all reasonable legislation designed to protect Australians and fight terrorism and crime. Our concerns about this bill arise primarily from the fact that such an important piece of legislation has taken so long to reach the parliament. Our concerns are about a minister who refuses to consult and work with industry to achieve appropriate outcomes. Senator Ellison has been a repeat offender at botching consultation with industry, as his efforts to implement the new Customs cargo system showed us at about this time last year. This is important legislation and it is high time it was brought before the parliament. It is high time we improved our standing in the international community and removed ourselves from the list of easy touches on the international money-laundering market, alongside Haiti and similar countries. It is time we removed ourselves from a list we should never have been on. It is a black mark against the Howard government that it has taken so long to bring these measures forward. I move: That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: “whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House: notes that the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) took swift action after September 11 2001, adding eight special recommendations on Counter-Terrorist Financing to the forty recommendations on Anti-Money Laundering by October 2001; notes the Minister for Justice (Senator Ellison)’s statement of June 5 2002 that “criminals and terrorists will continue to take advantage of jurisdictions where the law enforcement and regulatory powers are the weakest”; notes that the Government promised to meet FATF standards in 2003 and further notes the failure of the Minister for Justice to progress this legislation from that time until the present; notes that, in the interval between indicating an intent to produce legislation and actually tabling it: the Government, either through collaboration with AWB or the grossest incompetence, enabled AWB to fleece the UN of some $300 million in funds to channel them to the evil Iraqi Dictator, Saddam Hussein; in March 2005, the US State Dept Report Released by the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs named Australia as a “major money laundering country”. in April 2005, the Minister created a new anti-money laundering taskforce, but incredibly left off AUSTRAC, the nation’s prime anti-money-laundering agency. important anti-terrorism legislation was drafted incorrectly and the Parliament had to be recalled at great expense to fix sloppily-drafted anti-terror legislation by changing one word; further, provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Bill (No. 2) 2005 were also drafted incorrectly and had to be amended to avoid significant hardship to Australian business. in October 2005, the FATF reported on Australia’s compliance and found the Government had failed to meet the FATF standards, scoring just 12 out of 40 on anti money laundering, and 0 out of 9 on counter-terrorism financing. condemns the Government for allowing criminals and terrorists to launder money for three full years while the Minister fumbled the drafting and consultation process; condemns also the Government’s collaboration with AWB or gross incompetence in allowing the channelling of funds to Saddam Hussein; notes that the present legislation, while a substantial improvement on the past five years of soft and weak legislation on terrorist financing, still represents just the first tranche of the required reforms; calls on the government to outline a timetable for passage of the second tranche, so Australia will no longer be a target for criminals and terrorists seeking to take advantage of the Government’s soft and weak AML/CTF laws”. I note this matter will be carefully considered, clause by clause, in the Senate. My colleague Senator Ludwig, who has been intricately involved in the work of the committee and the Senate and is shadow minister with direct responsibility for these matters, will pursue detailed amendments—the two that I have mentioned and I suspect others that may come to light as a result of the consideration of the Senate committee. I would urge the government to look carefully at the recommendations that come from that Senate committee and at the amendments my colleague Senator Ludwig will move in the other place. 10000 Lindsay, Peter (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Lindsay)—I thank the member for Brisbane. Can I ask for clarification in respect of amendment (1), which has been circulated. I think the member changed a date from 2000 to 2001. ET4 Bevis, Arch, MP Mr BEVIS —The printed document contained an error in listing 11 September 2000, when it clearly should have been 11 September 2001. 10000 DEPUTY SPEAKER, The The DEPUTY SPEAKER —Is the amendment seconded? 83E Ripoll, Bernie, MP Mr Ripoll —I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak. 96 18:39:00 Richardson, Kym, MP E0B Kingston LP 1 0 Mr RICHARDSON —I rise today in support of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Bill 2006 and the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2006. Back in 2003 it was agreed that Australia would implement the financial action task force’s 40 recommendations on money laundering and nine special recommendations on terrorism financing. This government has undertaken a lengthy and detailed consultation process, the purpose of which was to ensure that, while complying with our obligations in relation to money laundering and terrorism financing, we also ensured that legitimate businesses did not suffer adversely as a result of the implementation of the legislation to put the recommendations into effect. These new regulations will cover the financial sector, gambling sector and bullion dealers as well as lawyers and accountants who provide financial services in direct competition with the financial sector. From the outset, let me say that we cannot underestimate the importance of dealing with the methods used by terrorists and their organisations to obtain financial support for their cause. Without the ability to finance their attacks on our freedom and on our way of life—without the ability to finance their brutal and barbaric attacks—they have no means by which to invoke fear. Legislation like this is an important aspect of the government’s war on terror and is an important weapon in our arsenal in our fight against terrorism. This bill imposes obligations on reporting entities when they provide designated services. Those services include things like opening an account, issuing a credit card or making a loan. The obligations include customer due diligence—that is, identification, verification and ongoing monitoring requirements. The obligations also extend to reporting requirements, including in relation to suspicious matters, threshold transactions, internal funds transaction instructions and compliance reports and record keeping. This bill implements a system whereby reporting entities will determine the way they meet their obligations based on their assessment of the risk of whether providing a designated service to a customer may facilitate money laundering or terrorism financing. The transitional bill makes a number of consequential amendments to various acts—for example, the Privacy Act, which will now be extended to all reporting entities with respect to their compliance with these new regulations. After consultation with industry it has been determined that this legislative package will be implemented over two years and that there will be an amnesty period of 12 months after each stage of the bill comes into effect. During amnesty periods AUSTRAC will concentrate its efforts on education. This bill puts into effect a number of measures which are, quite simply, common sense. If we as a nation failed to implement these measures we would leave the Australian financial market open to abuse by money launderers and those who finance terrorism.Furthermore, failure to meet the international standard would put our reputation at risk, along with the reputations of our financial markets, international business relationships and individual companies. This bill seeks to meet our international obligations. It makes common-sense amendments to our existing laws and, in the long run, protects Australians from the far-reaching impact of terrorism. For these reasons I commend this very important bill to the House. 97 18:45:00 Danby, Michael, MP WF6 Melbourne Ports ALP 0 0 Mr DANBY —I rise to speak on the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Bill 2006 and the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2006. Both these bills are designed to bring Australia into compliance with international standards to combat money laundering by both criminals and terrorist organisations. The bills thus have a criminal justice dimension and a national security dimension. The bills are needed so that Australia will be in compliance with the recommendation of the OECD’s Financial Action Task Force, known as FATF. Initially developed in 1990, the FATF recommendations were revised in 1996 to take into account changes in money-laundering trends and to anticipate potential future threats. In October 2001, a few weeks after the September 11 attacks, FATF held an emergency session in Washington in which it agreed that a whole new legislative regime was needed to combat terrorist-financing networks. More recently, in order to bring member states into compliance with these requirements as quickly as possible, FATF has completed a thorough review and update, known as the forty recommendations—perhaps to catch the 40 thieves of the Ali Baba story—which was published in 2003. All OECD member states are expected to legislate for compliance with these recommendations. Specifically, FATF called on OECD member states to take immediate actions to implement nine special recommendations, and I am going to read these out for a specific reason. Each country should: Take immediate steps to ratify and implement fully the 1999 United Nations International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism. Criminalise the financing of terrorism, terrorist acts and terrorist organisations. Implement measures to freeze without delay funds or other assets of terrorists, those who finance terrorism and terrorist organisations. Require financial institutions and other businesses to report promptly their suspicions to the competent authorities if they suspect that funds are being used for terrorism, terrorist acts or by terrorist organisations. Afford other countries the greatest possible measure of assistance in connection with proceedings relating to the financing of terrorism, terrorist acts and terrorist organisations. Take measures to ensure that persons or legal entities that provide a service for the transmission of money or value, including transmission through an informal money or value transfer system or network, should be licensed or registered. Take measures to require financial institutions, including money remitters, to include accurate and meaningful originator information on funds transfers and related messages. Review the adequacy of laws and regulations that relate to entities that can be abused for the financing of terrorism, including non-profit organisations. Have measures in place to detect the physical cross-border transportation of currency and bearer negotiable instruments. I have taken the time to read these recommendations into the Hansard because they are a benchmark by which Australia’s performance in this area should be judged. As the honourable member for Brisbane has noted—and I will come back to this shortly—we are a long way short of measuring up to these benchmarks. Labor generally supports these bills, which reflect international agreements on the best ways to combat money laundering by criminals and terrorists. However, we are opposed to several procedural aspects of this bill, particularly the Henry VIII clause, which allows the minister to override provisions of this bill at his discretion. Senator Ludwig, the shadow minister for justice in  the other place, will be moving amendments to remove, among other things, this unacceptable overriding of the rights of parliament to decide what the law is. Despite our general support for the bills, however, we have to ask why it has taken three years for the government to respond to the FATF recommendations. We do not deny that there are a number of complex technical matters in these bills and that many interested parties needed to be consulted. Nevertheless, in a matter of such urgency it seems to us that it should not have taken three years since FATF published its recommendations and five years since the OECD’s original call to action after September 11 to bring this bill before the House, particularly when we realise that these bills are only the first in a series of bills which will be needed to bring Australia into full compliance with the recommendations from FATF that I just read out. In 2002, the Minister for Justice and Customs, Senator Ellison, told us: … criminals and terrorists … will continue to take advantage of jurisdictions where the law enforcement and regulatory powers are the weakest. Yes, Senator, that is quite true; so what has been happening for the last four years? Senator Ellison told us that this was an urgent matter for the government. I do not think that long delays in producing these bills meet any definition of ‘urgent’. The honourable member for Brisbane has outlined the reason these bills have taken three years to develop. Senator Ellison made a complete mess of the consultation process during 2004 and 2005, effectively wasting two years. The government failed to consult properly with those who would be most affected by the new laws and then tried to push through a one-size-fits-all approach. After intense lobbying by industry, Senator Ellison was rolled in cabinet in mid-2005 and told to go and start again. Industry had legitimate grounds for complaint. The provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act (No. 2), passed in such haste in 2005, implemented a number of recommendations, but the bill was so badly drafted that the government was forced to amend many of its provisions in a later act, the Financial Transaction Reports Amendment Act 2006. The act as first drafted would have put some legitimate non-bank money remitters out of business. I hope the government’s incompetence in this area will not prevent the charging and trial of individuals recently identified by AUSTRAC’s Mr John Visser and the Australian Federal Police who allegedly have been, during a recent period, transferring thousands of dollars to Hezbollah, an organisation identified by this parliament as terrorist. I also hope that legislation that is now being passed can still be used to effect against people who have been involved in such activity if it is proved to be so. Another year was wasted while a new bill was drafted and another round of consultations was held. This is how the Howard government deals with ‘urgent’ matters such as bills that have not only huge financial implications for Australian industry but also important national security dimensions. We can be sure that terrorists and organised crime bosses have not spent the last three years waiting for the government’s legislation. They have been developing increasingly sophisticated ways of making money, moving money around and concealing their actions from governments. It is now more than three years since I spoke in the House about the need for tighter scrutiny of bogus charities, such as some of those based in Saudi Arabia which serve as fronts for terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, raising funds from the zakat, the voluntary tax for charity which the Muslim faithful pay, and diverting it to terrorism. I referred then to testimony before the US Congress about ‘the Golden Chain’, the Saudi Arabian based funding system for al-Qaeda which is based on bogus Islamic charities that launder zakat funds and pass them on to al-Qaeda. I also referred to Omar al-Faruq, who, after his arrest in Indonesia in 2002, told his interrogators that al-Qaeda’s operation in South-East Asia was funded through a Saudi charity known as the al-Haramain Foundation. According to al-Faruq, this money was laundered through the al-Haramain Foundation by donors in the Middle East who were close to Osama bin Laden. It is very good to see that the Indonesian authorities have made some moves against al-Haramain over the last few years as well. In the US at any rate, these bogus charities are now under much tighter supervision. The unofficial financial transfer system known as hawala, widely used in the Islamic world, is also being brought under closer scrutiny, since it is well known that this system has been exploited by al-Qaeda as a fundraising mechanism. The ‘Golden Chain’ is apparently still operating in Indonesia and Malaysia, however, providing the infrastructure for terrorist groups such as Jemaah Islamiah. Although I know that progress is being made by Asian countries such as Indonesia in cutting off funding to these terrorist networks, this work is far from complete, and it makes it all the more urgent that we prevent Australia being used as a base both for fundraising and for money laundering. One of the most alarming trends in recent years has been the closer cooperation that exists between organised crime and terrorism. Since it is becoming more difficult for terrorists to raise funds from fake charities, they have moved into money laundering. Terrorists are now working with drug traffickers and other criminals to launder the proceeds of crimes such as drug dealing, prostitution, intellectual property theft and smuggling. They use these activities to fund their operations, using legitimate businesses such as hotels and taxi operators as fronts to launder money. They are now also moving money through the new online payment systems as well as international ATM transfers. These transfers are very good because citizens travelling all round the world can make use of any ATM, but they are obviously of great benefit to people with nefarious purpose who can also use ATMs all round the world to transfer money. In the face of these trends, governments cannot afford to be complacent. Unfortunately, complacency is what we see all too often when we consider this government’s record on matters related to counter-terrorism. The government is happy to exploit fears of terrorism for political gain but is slow when it comes to actually doing what needs to be done to protect Australia against terrorism and to prevent Australia being used as a base for terrorist fundraising, recruiting and money laundering. We saw this most conspicuously with the recent spate of maritime and aviation security bills—far too little, too late and inadequate legislation in any case, because this government always puts the interests of its various lobby groups ahead of the national interest. These bills cover the financial, gambling and bullion-dealing industries, as well as lawyers and accountants. They expand the provisions of the Financial Transaction Reports Act 1988. The provisions of the bills will apply to a wider range of businesses than the 1988 act and will impose a wider range of obligations on them. We will apparently have to wait even longer for the second stage of the government’s compliance legislation, which will cover other activities of lawyers and accountants as well as the real estate industry. We do not even have a date for that legislation. It is no wonder that the May 2005 report of the US State Department ranked Australia with Haiti and the Dominican Republic as a ‘major money-laundering country’ and as a ‘country of primary concern’. It is disgraceful that Australia is ranked along with countries like Haiti and the Dominican Republic by our great American ally. The fact is that, in 2005, four years after September 11 and four years after the OECD’s call for urgent action to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, a FATF report found that Australia was fully compliant with only 12 of the 40 recommendations that I identified earlier and that it was not fully compliant with a single one of the nine special recommendations, which I read out, relating to terrorist financing. This is a truly disgraceful state of affairs, and one that is being only partly rectified by these bills. We still have no idea when the government intends to make Australia fully compliant with the 40 FATF recommendations. Labor support this bill as far as it goes, as we support all reasonable legislation which serves to protect Australia and to fight terrorism. But, as the honourable member for Brisbane has foreshadowed, we will be moving a range of amendments in the Senate. The deficiencies of this bill, as was the case with previous terrorism legislation, derive from the peculiar combination of delay and haste which so often marks this government. It does nothing for years, allows important matters to fester while it makes cheap political points and tries not to offend its own constituencies and then rushes in a bill so hastily and poorly drafted that it has to be amended even before it comes into effect. This seems to be the government’s way of dealing with such vital matters of national security. It is not good enough. 101 18:58:00 Hartsuyker, Luke, MP 00AMM Cowper NATS 1 0 Mr HARTSUYKER —I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important piece of legislation. The Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Bill 2006 seeks to address one of the core threats to Australia’s quality of life. It is now more than five years since the September 11 attacks but the threat of terrorism is still front-of-mind, and the need to take measures which will protect our citizens remains a priority of the coalition government. Tens of thousands of words have been written about the horror of September 11, but there remains a need for nations such as Australia to continue to assess what measures can be taken to ensure our people can live in a safe and secure environment. The vision of the twin towers crumbling in New York has left an indelible scar on our memories. Today’s war on terror is like no other war. We are not fighting any one country; rather, we are at war with a loose network of cells and organisations that seek to undermine the values of Western civilisation. Across the world, governments have taken action which aims to prevent or reduce the level of terrorist activity. And while their vigilance has been successful in nullifying many potential threats, the bombings in places such as London and Bali serve to remind us of the reality. Recently, I was reading a column in the Australian newspaper by its editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, in which he made a number of points that I believe summarise the impact of 9/11 and the subsequent actions on the war on terror. He wrote: That assault from the sky did more than kill 3000 people. It violated the US, destroyed its immunity, provoked its religious, cultural and political passions and unleashed an American strategic response under the leadership of George W. Bush ... The civil war within Islam that inspired 9/11’s aggressive martyrdom has escalated rapidly. It invades the globe like a noxious gas as fanatics and recruits to jihad launch murderous attacks on civilians from Bali to Madrid, Baghdad to London. The costs and consequences of the events on that day in New York and Washington are still with us. Not only are they shaping the way we live; they are still shaping the way we think. I am referring specifically to those organisations and individuals who are financing terrorist activities. Governments clearly have to take action not only against those individuals and groups who plan and carry out terrorist attacks but also against their sympathisers who finance these activities. We should also act against those who assist terrorists and who do so not out of sympathy with their aims and beliefs but out of a desire solely to make money. The Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Bill 2006 specifically targets those who financed these killers in New York, London, Bali and Madrid. These reforms will bring Australia into line with international standards set by the financial action task force, or FATF, with its 40 recommendations on money laundering and nine special recommendations on terrorism financing. The FATF recommendations provide an enhanced and comprehensive framework of measures for combating money laundering and terrorism financing. I would like to take a few moments to talk about the financial action task force, because its composition and actions bring credibility and discipline to this anti-terrorist legislation. The Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering is an intergovernmental body whose purpose is the development and promotion of policies at both national and international levels to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. The task force is a policy-making body which works to generate the necessary political will to bring about national legislative and regulatory reforms in these areas. FATF monitors members’ progress in implementing necessary measures, reviews money-laundering and terrorist-financing techniques and counter-measures, and promotes the adoption and implementation of appropriate measures globally. In performing these activities, FATF collaborates with other international bodies working in this area. Recognising the threat posed by these financial activities to the banking system and financial institutions, FATF was established by the G7 in 1989 from G7 member states, the European Commission and eight other countries, including Australia. The FATF was tasked with examining money-laundering techniques and trends, reviewing the actions taken at a national or international level and setting out the measures required. In April 1990, FATF issued a report containing a set of 40 recommendations which provided a comprehensive plan of action needed to combat money laundering. Since then, FATF has expanded its membership, has completed additional rounds of mutual evaluations of member countries and has continued to examine and report on the methods used to launder money. The bill imposes obligations on reporting entities when they provide designated services—that is, opening an account, making a loan or issuing a credit card. These obligations include customer due diligence such as identification, verification and ongoing monitoring. There is also provision for reporting suspicious matters, threshold transactions, international funds transaction instructions and compliance reports. The banking sector will be obliged to conduct due diligence of its correspondent banking relationships and ensure that appropriate identifying information is included in international electronic funds transfers. The bill implements a risk based approach to regulation. This means that reporting entities will determine the way in which they meet their obligations based on their assessment of the risk of whether providing a designated service to a customer might facilitate money laundering or terrorism financing. The approach has been endorsed by the banking industry. It recognises that reporting entities have the experience and knowledge needed to assess and mitigate risk and that the legislation will impose costs on industry. Importantly, it is worth noting that similar approaches have been taken in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Reporting entities will manage operational risks through anti money-laundering and counter-terrorism programs developed in accordance with the rules associated with anti money-laundering and counter-terrorism finance. The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, AUSTRAC, will monitor compliance with these programs and will assess the reasonableness of the entity’s risk assessment. The Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2006 makes a number of consequential amendments to various acts. For example, obligations under the Privacy Act 1988 will be extended to all reporting entities with respect to their compliance with the AMLCTF Bill. The transitional provisions bill will also amend the money-laundering offences in the Criminal Code 1995 to include proceeds of an offence against state and territory law. The legislative package will be supported by operational rules to be developed by AUSTRAC in consultation with industry. The use of the rules instead of subordinate legislation allows for flexibility in ensuring that the rules are appropriate to sector-specific needs. It is important to note that the government has consulted widely on this bill. In 2003, federal cabinet agreed to Australia implementing the financial action task force’s revised 40 recommendations on money laundering and nine special recommendations on terrorism financing. Importantly, the cabinet also agreed to consultation on the anti money-laundering and counter-terrorism financing reforms, including the release of an exposure draft of proposed legislation. Extensive consultation with industry took place between December 2003 and October 2005, during which agreement was reached on the broader need for AML-CTF reforms in the form of a risk based regulatory framework with head legislation supported by operational rules. In October 2005, cabinet agreed to progress the reforms in two tranches. The first part focused on covering the financial and gambling sectors and bullion dealers. Lawyers and accountants would also be covered to the extent that they provide services underpinning the financial sector. The second part covers real estate agents, jewellers, lawyers and accountants and will be progressed following implementation of the first tranche. Following the release of a draft in December last year, a consultation process of four months ensued. The bill was referred to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, and a report of their findings was published in April of this year. Feedback from the consultation through submissions and the report has prompted further changes. The revised drafts were then released for consultation in July this year. Over 70 submissions were received during the second consultation period. The lengthy consultation process has resulted in a legislative package that will ensure that Australia complies with its international obligations and maintains its status in the region with respect to prevention of money laundering and terror finance with minimal impact on legitimate business. I believe this legislation is an important further step in our nation’s fight against terrorism. If we can prevent the perpetrators of terrorist activities from laundering money, then we are restricting their capacity to create fear and inflict terror on our society. This particular legislation has been carefully drafted to reflect international best practice and a comprehensive consultation process has been undertaken. As I said earlier in my contribution, this is not a traditional war, and a major part of winning this war is winning control of the finances of the terrorists. I commend the bills to the House. 103 19:07:00 Hayes, Chris, MP ECV Werriwa ALP 0 0 Mr HAYES —I rise with a sense of relief to contribute to this debate on the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Bill 2006 and Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2006, because I and many others in this place were wondering whether these bills would ever be presented to this parliament. In his second reading speech, the Attorney-General made efforts to categorise this bill as ‘the product of extensive consultation between government, business and the community’. If you examine the real situation more closely, you will find that the legislative package that we have before us today is more a product of actions stemming from considerable international embarrassment. I will address that matter a little later on. I would like to indicate at the outset that I am generally supportive of the provisions in these bills. I am certainly supportive of taking action to combat the threat of terrorism, and I agree that one of the most powerful actions that we have at our disposal is shutting down the means by which terrorist organisations finance their operations. Terrorist organisations—like any other business, quite frankly—rely on the smooth transfer of money to fund their operations. Shutting down that flow of funds severely curtails their ability to organise and get operations off the ground. Stopping the flow of funds therefore severely hinders the ability of terrorist or criminal organisations to take or disrupt the lives of ordinary citizens. I indicated that I was pleased to be able to contribute to this debate, as I did not think it was ever going to occur. I say that because in February 2004 the Attorney-General rose in this place and gave a ministerial statement extolling the virtues of the government’s actions when it comes to tackling head-on the issue of terrorism. As part of the statement, he indicated: ... I have made it my business to ensure that the government is doing everything it possibly can to discharge its most important duty—that of protecting our country and our people—to ensure that our way of life, our values and our freedom to be safe in our own homes are protected and, in doing so, to defend the right of all peoples to live in peace. That is quite noble. From that statement, you would think that this government has been setting a cracking pace when it comes to putting in place all appropriate measures to deal with the threat of terrorist activity, whether it takes place in Australia or whether it is organised or funded by Australian based organisations. On genuine reflection upon what has occurred, I have to say that that is not the case at all. Despite the illusion that this government has tried to create of the pace of its response to terrorism, it would be described best as being disappointingly slow. It talks about action but certainly takes considerable time to deliver on its commitments. I raise this in the context of this bill because, given the importance of addressing terrorist financing, I feel it has taken far too long for this bill to come before the parliament. In December 2003 the government made a commitment to implementing the 40 revised recommendations of the OECD financial action task force. This commitment was confirmed in response to a question on notice asked by the member for Barton in May 2005. Interestingly, the Minister for Justice and Customs said in that response: Australia is already compliant with many of the FATF 40 Recommendations, while the rest will be implemented following the passage of new anti-money laundering legislation. It is interesting that the minister may have created the impression that we as a nation are subscribing to and implementing the majority of the 40 recommendations of the task force. But, in 2005, the financial action task force visited Australia to review Australia’s operations and legislative framework to evaluate the level of our compliance. As the member for Brisbane has said in this place, the task force report was an embarrassing read, to say the least. The task force reported that the government had yet to deliver a comprehensive response to the threat of terrorism financing. That is after the commitments made in 2003 and after the response to the question on notice. The position from the audit undertaken by the task force was that we had yet to deliver a comprehensive response to the threat of terrorist financing. In fact, it was found that Australia was only compliant with nine of the 40 recommendations on anti money laundering—nine, which is even less than a quarter. Of course that was not the only finding the task force made in auditing the level of our compliance. The task force also reported that Australia was not compliant in any of the nine special recommendations dealing with antiterrorism financing. That is a pretty sad indictment of the Minister for Justice and Customs, as was his response to the member for Barton when the minister indicated that we were compliant with many of the 40 recommendations. Not to put too fine a point on it, the word ‘many’ implies that it is the majority or close to the majority. The finding of the task force was that only nine recommendations had been adhered to—less than a quarter—and none of the special recommendations had been adhered to. It is a pretty poor reflection of this government’s efforts to address the terrorism threat. I would have thought that in the international community it would reflect pretty poorly on Australia’s ability to uphold its end of the bargain when it comes to shutting down the finances or having the capability to shut down the finances of terrorist organisations. Once again, it seems that, for all of those pieces of government rhetoric on national security, their actions just do not extend past the distribution of fridge magnets and Australia’s involvement in the conflict in Iraq. Regrettably, it is big talk and little action—and what action we have is slow in coming. We had a commitment given in December 2003. We are now on the cusp of December 2006. It is some three years later and we are finally debating the legislative framework that will be the guide for that commitment. Three years is a long time. Three years is a heck of a long time when we are talking about terrorism. I am sure that the members opposite will not like being reminded of the fact that it has taken so long for this legislation to come before the parliament. I am equally sure that members opposite will not like the fact that the myth of strong activity and taking a tough stand against terrorists that this mob have shrouded themselves in has been exposed as an illusion with this legislation taking three years to come before the parliament. I acknowledge that the government has taken some action in relation to combating terrorist activity, but these have been largely stopgap measures, hastily drafted and introduced without the proper examination that such legislation would ordinarily deserve. Do not forget: some of the legislation has been on the basis of ‘let us put it in now and revise it later’. There was even a situation where an amendment was introduced to change one word in a piece of legislation so that it could be operative. Despite the embarrassment that that has incurred, the task force’s report on Australia’s compliance stands as an indictment of this country and its level of meeting its commitments to and compliance with its earlier undertakings. It has sent a clear message to the heart of the government that it can no longer make small attempts to bring Australia in line with the rest of the world when it comes to putting in place all of the necessary conditions to limit the activity of terrorist organisations. It has prompted actions that the proper process for consultation has resulted in the legislation before us today. The task force has shown that temporary fixes are not enough. The process that has led to the introduction of this legislation has shown that it cannot get away with sloppy drafting when it comes to addressing these serious situations. As I have said, this bill is long overdue. It is long overdue and it is overly complex, but I must admit it will deliver significant improvements to Australia’s historically poor record when it comes to dealing with anti money laundering and counterterrorism financing. To that extent, I support the objectives of this bill. There has been extensive consultation on this bill to make sure that it is workable, given the serious concerns previously expressed, particularly by the business community. Therefore, we on this side of politics are largely supportive of this approach. However, this support is not without some concerns. There is a particular concern about clause 6(7) of the bill and I am of the view—as are many on this side of the chamber—that this clause should be struck out. All too often with this government we are seeing legislation being drafted and passed that uses extensive reliance on regulation to bring the provisions of the legislation into effect. While it is acknowledged that this is sometimes the best way to achieve the desired outcome, it is also the best way, quite frankly, to avoid proper scrutiny. In some instances this method is appropriate, but it concerns me that this government has a tendency to defer to the use of regulation rather than legislation. It defers to the use of regulation because it is the easiest to change and the changes can effectively be introduced by a ministerial media release where the biggest risk for the government is a bad story for a couple of days in the tabloids rather than having the changes being subject to proper questioning and debate of the parliament. Clause 6(7) of the bill affords the government the power to amend the tables of designated services in the act. Currently, the designated services include activities such as: provision of accounts or transactions to and from accounts; taking of deposits; loans and acting as guarantor of loans; factoring a receivable; forfeiting a bill of exchange or promissory notes; leasing, and the supply goods by way of lease; supplying goods by hire purchase; cheque accounts; bills of exchange, promissory notes or letters of credit; debit cards; stored credit cards; travellers cheques—and the list goes on. As I have indicated, while regulations like clause 6 are used to amend sections of legislation, they should only be used in limited circumstances and should only be used for compelling reasons. I do not believe that the case has been adequately made to provide us with enough comfort to allow the government to change designated tables by administrative fiat, as outlined in clause 6. The explanatory memorandum to this bill indicates that the reason for the inclusion of clause 6(7) has been to: ... allow the Bill to keep pace with business changes and changes in the techniques used by money launderers and terrorist financiers. It is a claim of flexibility. This is a claim that I tend to question. This legislative package contains a number of exemptions and discretions that prompt a number of serious questions about the necessity of allowing changes by regulation. I welcome the amendment by the opposition that would strike out clause 6(7). Flexibility is important, but flexibility can also come to mean different things to different people as time marches on. To allow this degree of flexibility by administrative fiat is too significant, given the nature of the legislation that is being debated before us this evening. It would be short-sighted of us as legislators to simply include provisions in legislation that suit our purposes in the here and now and not be mindful of an alternative interpretation that could be applied in the future. While recognising the general acceptance by the business community of the regime to be introduced—and certainly I acknowledge that it was introduced after lengthy consultation and follow-up—this bill will impose a significant compliance burden on small business. I think that is a matter of fact. I guess that can be put down as a consequence of the subject matter of these bills. However, it should be realised that a compliance burden is inevitable for small businesses in this country. As was pointed out to the government in the original drafting of the bill, the poorly drafted provisions that it contained would have hurt businesses. Quite frankly, it would have hit them hard. There was a real and legitimate concern from the business community that it was being asked to pay too high a price through increased business closures. I concede that this is a matter of balance. It is certainly a matter of placing binding commitments on the business community, but quite frankly it has got to be recognised that there are going to be organisations which will struggle to comply and there will be compliance costs. This needs to be noted by government as it passes legislation of this type. For instance, I note that initial funding has been provided for a period of four years to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and that a number of small businesses will receive additional guidance and assistance with the implementation of measures related to this bill. The fact that the government did get such a stern warning about the impact of the legislation in its original form should stand as a constant reminder that shoddy drafting produces wide-ranging impacts that need to be avoided in producing legislation of this type. The heightened sense of insecurity pervading the population following a range of terrorist attacks has resulted in a heightened sense of the need for increased protection from terrorist attack. The provisions of this bill will help to make a range of criminal activities less profitable and accordingly less likely to be undertaken. They will also make sure that Australia’s regulatory framework to shut down the financing of terrorist organisations is based on fact rather than on the myth and illusion that the government has previously tried to create around its actions to shut down terrorist operations. This will provide a disincentive for criminal activity and terrorist activity by making it more difficult and by making it less profitable for those organisations to go about their evil intent. (Time expired) 107 19:28:00 Ruddock, Philip, MP 0J4 Berowra LP Attorney-General 1 0 Mr RUDDOCK —Can I first thank the members for Brisbane, Melbourne Ports and Werriwa as well as my colleagues the members for Kingston and Cowper for their contributions to this debate. In summary, the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Bill 2006 and the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2006 form part of a legislative package that reforms our anti money-laundering and counter-terrorism financing regulatory regime. The primary purpose of the package is to ensure that Australia has a financial sector that is protected from abuse by those seeking to engage in criminal activity and terrorism. The reforms respond to increased and more sophisticated criminal and terrorist activity. The legislative package will also implement the better international standards contained in the financial action task force’s—that is, FATF’s—40 recommendations and nine special recommendations on terrorist financing. Compliance with these standards is important to ensure that Australian businesses can continue to operate and compete effectively in other countries that have implemented these international standards. Consistent with the government’s commitment to reducing regulatory burdens on business, the legislative package implements a risk based approach to regulation. The risk based regulatory approach recognises that businesses covered by the legislative package have the experience and knowledge needed to assess and mitigate the risk. It will also help mitigate compliance costs by providing industry with tools to concentrate their resources on areas where the risk of money laundering and terrorism financing is higher. Industry has endorsed this risk based approach. The Australian risk based approach is similar to that taken in the United States and the United Kingdom. Work on this package commenced in December 2003, and industry and other groups have been extensively consulted at all stages in the development of this package over time. This consultation has been vital in formulating a package that accommodates industry’s needs both operationally and on a cost basis. The government will continue to work closely with affected sectors in the implementation of this new strategy to minimise the impact on legitimate business activity while ensuring that Australia’s financial system remains hostile to criminal activity. In formulating the legislative package, the government has considered and addressed recommendations made by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, which conducted an inquiry into the exposure draft of the bill in February and March 2006, and the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, which has recently conducted a second inquiry into this package and has provided a report to the Senate today. I wish to place on record my appreciation for the work of the committee in producing its report in a short time frame along with other urgent matters that it has had to deal with. The committee has done a commendable job given the complex nature of the bills. The government will be responding to the committee’s report in the Senate. I also wish to thank members who contributed to this debate today, and at this point I will pick up a couple of the issues that have been raised during the speeches that we have heard. There seems to be some misunderstanding that Australia has been vulnerable to money laundering and terrorism financing because this bill has not been in place. This bill, in fact, builds upon the existing regulatory system that has been there since 1988. This was implemented in the Financial Transactions Reports Act 1988 and when we criminalised terrorism financing in 2002 as part of the Criminal Code, and we also criminalised money laundering in 1987 in the Proceeds of Crimes Act. So, when it is suggested that these are matters that we have not dealt with before, let me say this legislation deals with matters that have been dealt with but deals with them more comprehensively and more effectively. The member for Brisbane said that compliance with the FATF special recommendations had not been achieved. Let me say that the October 2004 FATF special recommendations found that Australia was largely compliant in five cases, partially compliant in two and non-compliant only on wire transfer rules—and that one is now, of course, fully addressed in the recent amendments which came into force on 14 December. The ninth special recommendation only came into operation in 2005 and is addressed in this bill. It has been said that our consultation process—and this has been picked up in the opposition amendment—has been somewhat long. We do not apologise for comprehensive consultation. In fact, as the member for Werriwa, who just spoke, observed—and I noted this: ‘There were real and legitimate concerns.’ I would say he was right, and it is appropriate that consultation took place in 2002 on the FATF discussion paper, in 2003 on the FATF recommendations, in 2004 on the five discussion papers to set the framework for drafting this legislation and through 2005-06 on the details of the bill and, now, the rules. I think the member for Brisbane should read the transcripts of the three days of hearings of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee. Every organisation that appeared confirmed that they were consulted and were happy with the consultation and noted the extent to which the department had gone to consult on all relevant issues. The opposition had some concerns about what is known as a ‘Henry VIII clause’—that is, clause 6(7). In the bill this clause permits regulations to be made to amend an item in the tables in clause 6. The tables in clause 6 identify who will be covered by the bill by setting out a series of designated services. Any person who provides a designated service will become a reporting entity under the bill. Subclause (7) will allow amendments to the definitions of designated services where new products of a similar kind to the existing designated services are created or structured in such a way that they would not be covered by existing definitions or where an industry or sector identifies and attempts to exploit a loophole in this particular table. For example, the financial sector could deliberately structure a product that is in some way outside the definition of a security or a derivative or a foreign exchange contract in item 33 of the table but which would still present the same money-laundering risk as other products. We need to be able to deal with those issues effectively. There were some other matters raised in relation to some recommendations from the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. I think it is important in that context to note a number of matters. This report is prepared annually by the United States Department of State for presentation to congress and it describes the efforts of key countries to attack drugs trade and associated crime. The particular report that was referred to by the member for Brisbane was brought down in 2004. In this International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, categorisation is based upon the size of a country’s economy and the sophistication of the financial institutions and transactions. Obviously, countries which have a larger and more complex flow of funds will become more vulnerable to money laundering. In the report it was made clear that categorisation was not based on anti-money-laundering measures taken by that particular country and that Australia, along with the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, is identified as being of primary concern despite having comprehensive anti-money-laundering laws and conducting aggressive anti-money-laundering efforts. The report noted that the current ability of money launderers to penetrate virtually any financial system makes every financial jurisdiction a potential money-laundering centre. As a major centre Australia, of course, will be vulnerable to money laundering. It is in response to this that the government and law enforcement agencies continue their efforts to combat that practice both domestically and in the Asia-Pacific region. It is to ensure that we maintain a robust and effective system to combat money laundering that the government has initiated the anti-money-laundering review in response to the revised recommendations of FATF. And, of course, I would say that this legislation is equally important in updating the existing arrangements, particularly those that I referred to earlier. I note that the opposition has proposed an amendment. The amendment picks up the criticisms that I have addressed. The opposition amendment, looking at the consultation that has taken place over a period of time, states that the House: ... condemns the Government for allowing criminals and terrorists to launder money for three full years while the Minister fumbled the drafting and consultation process ... As I said earlier, I think this minister, the Minister for Justice and Customs, has been extraordinarily competent, ensuring the government’s objective in implementing these measures, with full consultation, cognisant of our obligations in implementing the FATF recommendations but doing so in a way which, in the words of the member for Werriwa, addressed the ‘real and legitimate’ concerns of the private sector. I do not think he should be condemned in any way, shape or form whatsoever for ensuring that these issues are dealt with in the most effective way. Those businesses concerned about the implementation of those measures were fully consulted. Their views were heard and taken into account. We are moving to implement measures that ensure that our obligations are met and that we will be largely FATF compliant, in the same way that our major trading partners are in the United Kingdom and the United States, but cognisant of the special situations that people may face in meeting these arrangements. The government will be opposing the second reading amendment proposed by the opposition. I welcome the opposition’s advice that they will not be opposing the bill itself. 10000 Kerr, Duncan (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. DJC Kerr)—The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Brisbane has moved as an amendment that all words after ‘That’ be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The question now is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question. Question agreed to. Original question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced. 110 Mr RUDDOCK (Berowra —Attorney-General) 19:40:00 —by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. 110 BILLS R2655 110 Debate resumed from 1 November, on motion by Mr Ruddock: That this bill be now read a second time. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced. 110 Mr RUDDOCK (Berowra —Attorney-General) 19:42:00 —by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. 111 BILLS R2649 111 Bill returned from Main Committee without amendment; certified copy of the bill presented. Ordered that this bill be considered immediately. Bill agreed to. 111 Mrs DE-ANNE KELLY (Dawson —Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Transport and Regional Services) 19:43:00 —by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. 111 BILLS S525 111 Bill returned from Main Committee without amendment; certified copy of the bill presented. Ordered that this bill be considered immediately. Bill agreed to. 111 Mrs DE-ANNE KELLY (Dawson —Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Transport and Regional Services) 19:44:00 —by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. 111 BILLS R2617 111 Bill returned from Main Committee without amendment; certified copy of the bill presented. Ordered that this bill be considered immediately. Bill agreed to. 111 Mrs DE-ANNE KELLY (Dawson —Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Transport and Regional Services) 19:45:00 —by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. 111 BILLS R2625 111 Bill returned from Main Committee without amendment; certified copy of the bill presented. Ordered that this bill be considered immediately. Bill agreed to. 111 Mrs DE-ANNE KELLY (Dawson —Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Transport and Regional Services) 19:46:00 —by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. 112 BILLS R2527 112 BILLS R2637 112 BILLS R2638 112 Message received from the Senate returning the bills without amendment or request. 112 BILLS R2648 112 Debate resumed from 1 November, on motion by Mr Ruddock: That this bill be now read a second time. 112 19:47:00 Rudd, Kevin, MP 83T Griffith ALP 0 0 Mr RUDD —I rise today to speak on the Customs Legislation Amendment (New Zealand Rules of Origin) Bill 2006. The bill amends Australia’s customs legislation to give effect to an agreement between Australia and New Zealand to amend the rules of origin under the Australia-New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement, ANZCERTA. Specifically, the bill replaces the existing regional value content, or RVC, rules of origin with the change of tariff classification, or CTC, rules. Rules of origin are used to determine which products qualify as domestically produced such that they can receive preferential tariff treatment under the FTA. Under the current RVC rules, a New Zealand product exported to Australia can receive preferential tariff treatment if the last production process occurred in New Zealand and at least 50 per cent of the cost of production also occurred in New Zealand. Under the proposed CTC rules of origin, for a good to receive preferential tariff treatment it must have been substantially transformed. This is determined by whether the good changes its tariff classification under the harmonised system of tariff codes, a system defined by the World Customs Organisation. In a world of global supply chains, in which various processes of manufacture for one finished product may take place in several countries, the RVC system of rules is becoming increasingly irrelevant to modern production methods. Under the current RVC system, should the final process of manufacture occur in a third country, the product will not qualify for preferential treatment no matter how minor the final process. This is the case even if more than 50 per cent of the cost of manufacture has occurred in Australia or New Zealand. In a report on the ANZCERTA rules of origin in 2004, the Productivity Commission concluded that the current system of rules of origin was out of date and acting as a constraint on trade. The Productivity Commission outlined the following advantages of the CTC method in general: (1) it reduces compliance costs; (2) it avoids the impact of price changes or exchange rate movements on origin status; (3) it increases certainty; and (4) it requires minimal records for Customs audits. The CTC method was also adopted in the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement and the Australia-Thailand Free Trade Agreement. This consistency makes compliance simpler for companies exporting to two or three of these countries. On the whole, Labor supports the amendment to the rules of origin since it provides for an up-to-date and consistent method of prescribing preferential tariff treatment. However, our concern is that, through the government’s inadequate consultation process, at least one company could needlessly be negatively affected by the change to the point where a significant number of jobs may be at risk. While we are considering a key piece of legislation that affects Australia’s trade, we should take some time to consider Australia’s recent trade performance. Australia is experiencing its worst trade performance on record. Tomorrow, the Australian Bureau of Statistics will release data on Australia’s trade performance in October. Australia has already had 54 consecutive monthly trade deficits, the longest run of trade deficits on record. Australia’s annual trade deficit for 2005-06 was $14.5 billion; that is, Australia imported $14.5 billion more in goods and services than it exported. Each trade deficit adds directly to our current account deficit. The trade deficit, together with Australia’s interest and dividend payments on existing foreign debt, equals our current account deficit. In 2005-06, Australia’s current account deficit was $54.4 billion, marginally lower than the record $57.4 billion current account deficit in 2004-05. Every month, every quarter and every year that Australia imports more than it exports, the money to pay for the shortfall must come from somewhere. To cover our current account deficit, Australia borrows from overseas. As a result of the current account deficit in 2005-06, Australia’s foreign debt grew by a further $60 billion to $494 billion; that is, Australia now has a foreign debt of close to half a trillion dollars. To put that in some perspective, that equates to $24,000 of debt for every man, woman and child in this country. This has occurred at a time when Australia has experienced its strongest terms of trade in 30 years. Driven by a boom in demand for resource commodities, the prices of Australia’s resource exports have increased significantly over the past three years. The real problem has not been the prices of our largest exports, but the failure of the volume of exports to pick up in response. Between 1983 and 1996, Australia averaged growth in export volumes of 8.4 per cent per annum. However, over the last 10 years this has slowed to just 3.8 per cent per annum; what is even more concerning is that it has declined further to average growth of just 0.9 per cent per annum over the past five years. Australia’s exports of manufacturing and services have been affected in a similar way. The volume of Australia’s exports of elaborate manufactures averaged growth of 12.9 per cent a year between 1983 and 1996. Over the past 10 years growth has more than halved, averaging 5.6 per cent a year, and over the past five years it has slowed further to just 2.7 per cent a year. The volume of services exports averaged yearly growth of 9.3 per cent between 1983 and 1996. This has slowed to an average of just 2.6 per cent per annum over the past 10 years. Worst of all, over the past five years the volume of services exports has recorded an average decline of 0.7 per cent per year. By taking a strategy that involves Australia becoming merely China’s quarry and Japan’s beach, the Howard government has chosen by and large to ignore our high-tech services and manufacturing industries—and particularly their capacity to contribute to the country’s overall export performance. In 2005, of total world trade of $12.5 trillion, the largest share—$7.3 trillion, or 58 per cent—was accounted for by trade in manufactures. The second largest traded item was services at $2.4 trillion or 19 per cent. Natural resource commodities accounted for $1.75 trillion, or just 14 per cent, of world trade. By taking a narrow approach the government is not just putting all our eggs in one basket; it is putting all our eggs in the smallest basket of world trade. Australia’s trading relationship with New Zealand is one of the bright spots of Australia’s overall trade performance. In 2005-06, Australia exported $11.9 billion worth of goods and services to New Zealand, which comprised $8.7 billion in goods exports and $3.2 billion in services exports. This makes New Zealand Australia’s fifth largest export destination after Japan, China, the United States and the Republic of Korea. New Zealand is one of the few major trading partners with which Australia has a trade surplus. In 2005-06 Australia’s goods and services trade surplus with New Zealand was valued at $4.3 billion, though this is a seven per cent reduction on the $4.6 billion recorded in 2004-05. The decline in the trade surplus was due to a fall in Australia’s exports to New Zealand of 1.8 per cent at the same time as Australia’s imports from New Zealand rose by 1.6 per cent. Australia’s goods exports to New Zealand declined by 4.5 per cent in 2005-06, while exports of services managed solid growth of 6.7 per cent. Looking at longer run trends, we see that the growth in Australia’s exports to New Zealand follows a similar pattern to Australia’s overall exports growth performance—that is, one of slowing growth under the current government. Data on Australia’s exports of goods by country is only available back to 1988-89. However, for seven years, between 1988-89 and 1995-96, under the previous Labor government, exports of goods from Australia to New Zealand averaged an annual growth of 13.9 per cent. This compares to average annual growth of just 4.5 per cent over the 10 years under the current government. The importance of New Zealand to the Australian economy is highlighted when the breakdown of Australia’s exports to New Zealand is considered. New Zealand is rare among Australia’s trading partners in that our largest export to New Zealand is in the services sector. In 2005-06, Australia exported $2.1 billion of personal travel services to New Zealand, placing it third behind China and Japan. Despite being only Australia’s fifth largest exports market overall, New Zealand is our largest destination for elaborately transformed manufactured exports. Australia’s elaborately transformed manufactured exports to New Zealand were valued at $5.5 billion in 2005, which was 21 per cent of our total ETM exports globally. In fact, apart from refined petroleum, the top five Australian goods exports to New Zealand are all elaborate manufactures. Specifically, they are passenger motor vehicles, medicines, computers and paper products. In 2005, Australia exported $450 million worth of passenger motor vehicles to New Zealand, making it the second largest export destination for the Australian automotive industry. At a time when Australia’s exports base is narrowing, this makes New Zealand a very important trading partner for Australia. Australia is also an important trading partner for New Zealand. In fact, Australia is New Zealand’s largest trading partner, with Australia accounting for 21.4 per cent of New Zealand’s exports in 2005 and 20.9 per cent of its imports. New Zealanders also invest heavily in Australia. Total investment by New Zealand in Australia was valued at $24.3 billion in 2005, making it the country with the eighth largest investment in the Australian economy. The relationship is not just measured in dollar terms; it can also be measured by the influx of people. In 2005, 18,500 New Zealanders migrated permanently to Australia, making New Zealand the second largest source of migrants for Australia behind the United Kingdom. Some argue that the Australia-New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement could be said to be our only successful bilateral free trade agreement to date. In general, preferential bilateral free trade agreements have a number of drawbacks. First, bilateral agreements can lead to trade distortion rather than trade creation. That is, when two countries sign a bilateral agreement, the lower preferential tariff may induce them to import from their new partner because the reduced tariff makes that country’s imports cheaper. However, the most efficient and lowest cost producer may be a third country whose product becomes uncompetitive since they do not receive the lower tariff rate. Hence, trade is merely diverted from a low-cost country to a higher cost country. Second, bilateral agreements create a spaghetti bowl of rules of origin. Each bilateral agreement has its own rules of origin, sometimes using different methodologies. With the proliferation of bilateral agreements and attached rules of origin, it becomes time consuming and costly for companies to adhere to them all. This can reach the point where it becomes cheaper for an exporter to pay the higher tariff rather than comply with the rules of origin and receive the lower preferential tariff under an FTA. Third, bilateral free trade agreements take scarce resources and diplomatic focus away from the main game in liberalising world trade, which is the multilateral agreements currently under negotiation through the World Trade Organisation. This is clearly the case for Australia’s prosecution of the Doha Round of WTO negotiations—and these, of course, have run significantly into the mud in recent times. At the same time as we are negotiating the Doha Round, Australia has also been negotiating bilateral agreements with Singapore, the United States, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates—now expanded to the Gulf Cooperation Council—China and Malaysia. There have also been preliminary discussions and studies on bilateral agreements with Japan and Chile. This has clearly diverted scarce resources away from the negotiation of the Doha Round. What is more, Australia’s lead in the rush to bilateral agreements has diverted the attention of other countries from the Doha Round. Bilateral agreements provide an easy fallback position for countries negotiating the Doha Round. It is easy to say, ‘If the Doha Round fails, we can always have the bilaterals.’ This is particularly disappointing given that Australia, through its leadership of the Cairns Group, is pivotal in bringing the Uruguay Round to a successful conclusion. Further, the empirical evidence to date for Australia on bilateral agreements is not good; in fact, the data is disappointing. The Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement and the Thailand-Australia Free Trade Agreement came into effect on 1 January 2005. The Singapore free trade agreement came into effect in July 2003. Australia’s export performance with each of these countries has in overall terms worsened since these agreements came into effect. Since the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement came into effect, Australia’s annualised trade deficit with the US has increased by 13 per cent, to $14.7 billion. The government’s commissioned study into the AUSFTA predicted that Australian exports to the United States would grow by $3 billion per annum. In 2005, Australia’s exports to the United States actually fell by $132 million. While it is early days, it has to be recognised that there is a long way to go from the negative growth in exports experienced in 2005 to the projected growth of $3 billion a year anticipated by the government at the time we negotiated the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement. The government commissioned study on the AUSFTA also anticipated that the largest gains from the agreement would come through the increased investment flows between the two countries. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade fact sheet on the AUSFTA stated: Much of this growth will be generated by the dynamic gains expected from the deeper links the Agreement establishes between Australia and the US, with the CIE finding investment liberalisation the biggest contributor to the projected increase in Australia’s GDP. However, US investment in Australia has in fact fallen significantly since the agreement came into effect. There are a number of key sectors in the economy that were left out of that agreement. Australian sugar farmers received no additional long-term access to US markets despite Central American countries receiving an additional 100,000 tonnes access per annum under the Central American free trade agreement. I am sure that the member for Dawson, who is currently sitting at the table, would as a fellow Queenslander be concerned about the fact that we have received no additional access to the US sugar market as a consequence of the AUSFTA despite the fact that we were assured at the time that if there were no sugar there would be no deal. It is a pity that promise was not honoured. As a result, Australia’s sugar farmers will continue to be restricted to a quota of just 90,000 tonnes. Another outstanding concern is the lack of mutual recognition of Australian financial markets qualifications by the United States. Under the agreement, US qualified and licensed brokers are automatically recognised and able to trade in Australia. Australian brokers must go through an onerous process with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to be able to operate in the US. Australia’s free trade agreement with Thailand has seen our trade deficit with Thailand worsen. In 2004, Australia’s annual trade deficit with Thailand was $1.5 billion. By June 2006, Australia’s annualised trade deficit with Thailand had grown to $1.6 billion. Australia’s free trade agreement with Singapore has had more time to have an effect on the economy, since it became operational in mid-2003. In 2002-03, Australia had a trade surplus of $162 million with the Republic of Singapore. By 2005-06, this had not only been reversed into a trade deficit but had blown out to a most significant trade deficit indeed. Australia’s exports to Singapore have flatlined over the past two years. In 2002-03, Australia’s exports to Singapore were valued at $6.9 billion. In 2005-06, they were valued at $6.4 billion. Something is going radically wrong with our export performance in relation to the Republic of Singapore. Singapore’s exports to Australia, however, have more than doubled from $6.9 billion to $14.5 billion. It would be interesting to know what is happening in this significant regional economic relationship to see such a radical turnaround in the bilateral trade figures, which has been significantly negative from Australia’s perspective. In a period when Australia is experiencing its worst trade performance on record, the government’s trade policies appear to be not significantly improving this position. The challenge overall, beyond these bilateral agreements and all the complications that are associated with them, is for this government to join every element of its diplomatic and political energies towards the successful conclusion of the Doha multilateral round. The Australian Labor Party in government—at a time, Mr Deputy Speaker Kerr, when you were a member of that previous Labor government—actively contributed to the resolution of the Uruguay Round through the sterling contributions of the likes of the late Senator Peter Cook. Through those agencies, we were able to bring to the negotiating table an influence which brought that round to a successful conclusion—which, for the first time, included agriculture. There you have it. It was a Labor government—those opposite would say the ALP does not have a natural connection with the agricultural constituency, but I beg to differ; I grew up on a farm myself—that delivered in terms of getting agriculture onto the WTO agenda. We are proud of that fact. But what we are concerned about is that there has been a sapping of the diplomatic and political energies behind the multilateral trade effort. What I know of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is that, at the end of the day, there is a limited number of qualified people who are charged with the negotiating brief. You cannot expect officials to pull off miracles when they are being asked to undertake multiple tasks at the same time. These bilateral deals are personnel intensive. The deal with China is exceptionally personnel intensive. When we are simultaneously seeking in the last period of the Doha negotiating round to try to bring that most critical round to a conclusion, I question and question again the extent to which our department is being asked to do too much, given the limits to its bureaucratic resources, with a Prime Minister who is not fully seized of the significance of the successful conclusion of Doha in terms of the political capital he is prepared to inject into this exercise. Recently, I reflected on and read again of the successful conclusion of the Uruguay Round. When I read the speeches by Minister Dawkins, Minister Cook, Prime Minister Hawke and Prime Minister Keating, what struck me time and time again was that, each time these ministers and prime ministers travelled abroad, the successful conclusion of the multilateral round was at the top of the prime ministerial list of priorities; it was at the top of the negotiating list for whichever country they were visiting around the region and around the world. I do not see that evident in Prime Minister Howard’s list of priorities when he travels the region and the world; it is not accorded the same level of priority. Instead, this government has placed a large number of its eggs in one basket—that is, a series of bilateral agreements—and the figures which begin to produce themselves off the back of these bilateral agreements are not, thus far, encouraging for Australia. Leaving aside the broader point—not just the philosophical point but the basic economic theory that global trade liberalisation enables all economies to advance and to grow—it provides the most efficient allocation of resources across the global economic system, as opposed to bilateral arrangements which can be trade distorting, although not necessarily. Certainly it delivers complexity to exporters-producers—the spaghetti bol I referred to before. The legislation which is the subject of debate in the House tonight is the Customs Legislation Amendment (New Zealand Rules of Origin) Bill 2006. I have canvassed our approach to the legislation. I have indicated that we have concerns about the impact of this legislation and this agreement as it relates to a particular firm. My colleague the member for Gellibrand will move an amendment at the appropriate time. We would ask the government to give that amendment strong and appropriate consideration, given the impact that will be felt by one particular group of employees. Beyond that, could I simply conclude by saying that, for Australia, the economic relationship with New Zealand is of critical importance. The political relationship with New Zealand is of critical importance. We look to the South Pacific—and I notice my colleague the member for Maribyrnong, the shadow minister for the Pacific Islands, sitting at the table right now—and, were it not for New Zealand and many of the countries where we are currently engaged politically and militarily in the South Pacific, we would be in even greater difficulty than we are at the moment. New Zealanders have been strong and positive partners in our regional diplomacy in the South Pacific. However, as I have indicated through my remarks this evening, it is not just as diplomatic partners; the numbers reflected in our bilateral economic relationship show the New Zealand trade relationship is one of the few bright spots in our overall trade horizon when the global data for Australia has been trending negative for almost five years. 10000 Kerr, Duncan (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. DJC Kerr)—I thank the honourable shadow minister for foreign affairs. My heart warms at his remembrance of times past. Memory sometimes treats us oddly. 118 20:09:00 Baird, Bruce, MP MP6 Cook LP 1 0 Mr BAIRD —Thanks very much, Mr Deputy Speaker Kerr. It is great to see you in that role after your very impressive stay at the UN. I wish tonight to rise in support of the Customs Legislation Amendment (New Zealand Rules of Origin) Bill 2006. The CER we have with New Zealand is a very important document because a major part of our trade goes to New Zealand. New Zealand represents our largest source of tourists into this country and, likewise, we are the No. 1 source of tourists for New Zealand. In respect of investments in New Zealand, we are No. 1. New Zealand also ranks significantly in this country. Trade both ways is very significant. The CER was developed in 1983. We have been through the 20th anniversary, when the New Zealand parliament reviewed the CER agreement to consider the issues and the problems, where they still existed. At the invitation of the New Zealand government, I visited the parliament and spoke to people there, and they encouraged the Australian parliament to also look at the issues and problems from our perspective. It is true that the Trade Subcommittee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade was probably a little tardy but we reviewed the agreement some 23 years after the CER was inaugurated in 1983, and we are about to present the report to parliament. The Trade Subcommittee found that the CER had served both countries very well. It had significantly developed trade in both countries. It had removed many of the barriers, and it encouraged development. As a result, we moved very much to a free trade environment although we certainly still had the issues around common currency and common borders. In reviewing the CER, it was true to say that, from discussions with industry and departments on this side and on the New Zealand side of the equation, there were no major problems. They were more looking forward—for example, how we could improve the common border situation. There was no great enthusiasm for common currency on either side of the Tasman. We looked at how we could reform telecommunications such that there is a greater ease of relationship between the two countries and without the barriers to investment that exist on either side of the Tasman, as we have two major competitive organisations operating: Telstra and New Zealand Telecom. Overall, it has been a great success. New Zealand is our major trading partner. We have a very long term relationship. As part of the ANZAC, these two countries are brought together not only commercially but also through a significant emotional attachment. We regard New Zealanders and Australians as being interchangeable on most days—except when we play rugby or cricket against one another and then things change a bit! With respect to the rest of the time, obviously the very significant level of migration from New Zealand into Australia means that we have many New Zealanders in very senior jobs across the whole economic spectrum. In our report, we are looking at the need for trade coordination so that it is easier for a plumber in Australia to get a job in New Zealand and vice versa. This is particularly important when we have very low unemployment levels and as we try to solve some of our skills shortages resulting from the resources boom. That is being addressed by individual trade associations. This legislation addresses the rules of origin. It was interesting, when the Trade Subcommittee visited New Zealand, that the only major issue raised with us by ministers was the question of New Zealand suits being brought into Australia. They said that some Australian suit manufacturers, based predominantly in the state of Victoria, the member for Maribyrnong’s state, were complaining about the importation of New Zealand suits and that they were unable to supply suits because part of the product was produced offshore. We could really call this legislation the ‘Customs Legislation Amendment (New Zealand Rules of Origin, Especially for Suits) Bill’ because it is all about suits from New Zealand. It is somewhat ironic, when today lots of our footwear and textiles are imported from China and from South-East Asia in large quantities, that we should be arguing with New Zealand over the importation of suits. But that is the way it is: part of it is produced in China and it was decided that we should address it. When the Trade Subcommittee came back from New Zealand we spoke to the Minister for Justice and Customs—you would know that role particularly well, Mr Deputy Speaker Kerr, having been a proud occupant of the role in past times—about the problems that the New Zealanders had raised with us. I am sure there are other very good reasons why this bill was produced relating to other commodities and products, but I am aware that this was one issue which concerned the New Zealanders. As we know, the Australia-New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement, or ANZCERTA, came into force in March 1983. It was revised and updated in February 2006 and continues to be strong and viable. There are a number of bilateral ministerial meetings on a regular basis designed to look at this issue. One of the issues we had, which will be coming forward in the recommendations, was the need, because it cuts across so many different portfolios, to have one ministry responsible for driving the program. To a certain extent, the Treasury has been in that driving role, and we will see how that develops, but that was one area where it seemed people were not quite sure who was driving the program to ensure we had a common economic union with New Zealand. The amendments are set to come into force on 1 January 2007. Under the review a preferential entry of goods provides New Zealand goods and services with preferential access to the Australian market by eliminating barriers to trade between our nations in a gradual phase-out process. The first step in this process is to eliminate tariffs on goods which have been either wholly manufactured or substantially manufactured in New Zealand, as defined by the rules of origin. Under these, at least 50 per cent of the cost of producing the goods must be incurred in Australia or New Zealand. Ever since 1990, all goods that have met these rules of origin have been able to be traded duty free between Australia and New Zealand. Due to the nature of changes within our economies—in other words globalisation, which you would have heard a lot about at the UN, Mr Deputy Speaker—some business representatives have seen these rules of origin as a hindrance to growth and further trade. In accordance with one of the current rules, manufactured goods imported from New Zealand are originating and therefore eligible for a preferential rate of duty if the last process of manufacture occurs in New Zealand and the goods satisfy a regional value content requirement. This is totally sensible and totally realistic. Why did we not think of that before? Congratulations to those involved in bringing forward this legislation. Sometimes, despite the majority of the stages in production occurring in Australia or New Zealand, the final stage is outsourced, thus creating a tariff to be imposed on the good when traded between Australia and New Zealand. This bill implements amendments to the CER that would also allow the change in the tariff classification method to be used, along with a regional value content requirement, to determine whether goods from New Zealand are New Zealand originating goods. The reality is that we have a free trade arrangement with New Zealand and a common economic market. We are bringing products in directly from China anyway with very little tariff, so if the last part of the good is produced in New Zealand then this makes sense. The CTC approach being adopted through this legislation examines the product’s non-originating inputs and makes a determination as to whether substantial transformation has taken place in producing the final good. This will therefore enable such goods to be considered ‘New Zealand originating’. This approach is based on the World Customs Organisation’s harmonised system of tariff codes and is widely used throughout the world. We see this as being useful. It will smooth out some of the bumps in our trade relationship more than have a dramatic impact. As stated by our Minister for Trade at the time, along with his New Zealand counterpart, the last process of manufacture method will continue to be available alongside the new change in tariff classification method. This provision will be in effect until December 2011, allowing traders and manufacturers time to come to terms with and adapt to the changes. It is an entirely sensible arrangement. One of the key ministers we saw had suit manufacturers in his electorate, which I think focused his mind particularly on this issue. I am glad we resolved it. I am glad the relationship with New Zealand remains strong and firm. May we long beat them in cricket and in rugby, but let us get our economic union in working order so that the arrangements of the past no longer bog us down in unnecessary bureaucratic requirements. This will facilitate the strength of our combined economies, which is to the mutual benefit of Australia and New Zealand. I commend the bill to the House. 10000 Kerr, Duncan (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. DJC Kerr)—I thank the honourable member for Cook for his kind remarks. I certainly enjoyed his company when we were in New York together at the United Nations, where I also learned of his appreciation of fine suits. 120 20:21:00 Roxon, Nicola, MP 83K Gellibrand ALP 0 0 Ms ROXON —Amidst all of this self-congratulation about suits I hate to rain on everybody’s parade, but there are actually some industries that, unfortunately, are not getting similar special treatment. Whilst I understand that there are historic reasons for some exceptions being in place and negotiated as part of this agreement, I am in the unfortunate position where a company in my electorate will be severely affected by the changes that will be brought about as part of the Customs Legislation Amendment (New Zealand Rules of Origin) Bill 2006. Other members in the House have already spoken on the broader context of the agreement, and I do not want to detract from the general comments made about improving economic relations between our countries and removing the barriers that we can remove, but there is unfortunately sometimes a downside to these arrangements. The downside exists for a detergent producer in my electorate. The proposed change of arrangements from the regional value content method that exists now to the tariff classification method will mean that a substantial amount of trade between Australia and New Zealand will cease to exist and will be replaced by trade between China and New Zealand. The New Zealand company will still be able to provide their product into the Australian market, courtesy of these proposed new arrangements, with the same tariff treatment it would have received when part of its manufacturing process was being undertaken in Australia, with the final manufacture being done in New Zealand and the product coming back into Australia. I will spend some time on the impact that the proposed arrangement will have on the business in my electorate and on the workers who will no doubt be affected by it. The arrangement will also have the bizarre result of reducing trade between Australia and New Zealand by the significant amount of $7 million, because the New Zealand company has already indicated that, as soon as these new rules are in place, it will obtain its product from China at a rate that the company in my electorate says indicates that it is being dumped. There is no way that an Australian company will be able to take any action, because it will not be dumped in Australia. It does mean that the New Zealand company will have a commercial advantage, but it will not really be a commercial advantage to either of our countries. It is not even a situation where, difficult as it may be for individual workers or members when it affects their electorates, the jobs are being moved from Australia to New Zealand. The jobs impact is all negative in Australia, and it is not positive in New Zealand. Certainly the New Zealand company will be able to increase its profit line, but it made quite clear in the evidence provided to the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties that it was not making any undertakings about passing on any benefits to consumers as a result of this change, and it was not making any undertakings about extra employment in New Zealand. These things will be of little comfort to the workers in my electorate, but it may have been, in the overall picture of the relationship we are continuing to develop between Australia and New Zealand, something that others could at least have seen the sense of. It is very hard to make that argument when the consequence is that a New Zealand company will be able to buy product from China at a rate at which other companies cannot. If another competitor in Australia bought product from China at that rate, the company in my electorate would take antidumping action, as I understand they have either done or contemplated doing in the past. So this unfortunate situation is made more unfortunate—and I know the discussion between the Deputy Speaker and the member for Cook, who was speaking just before, was good humoured—when you understand that exceptions are able to be made for particular industries. There are exceptions that exist for gentlemen’s apparel; why can’t there be an exception for this particular detergent product, when we know that both Australia and New Zealand participate in the production, where there are good relationships between the companies and where a very competitive market exists? There could not be any suggestion that laundry detergents and products are not a competitive sector of the retailing industry. I am very concerned, so I have raised this issue. The affected company in my electorate is Albright and Wilson. They wrote to me when they first became aware of this proposed agreement. Disappointingly, they did not see the one advertisement that was in the Financial Review, I think, or the Australian. They were not contacted by the department or through their industry association. I understand that efforts are often made for that to happen and that the department cannot always get everybody, but I think this situation has shown an inadequacy in the process. The only reason the company became aware of it was that the New Zealand company that had the contractual arrangement with them to buy their product had a clause in their agreement that they should provide six months notice if they wanted to stop buying the product from the Australian company. So the New Zealand company, seeing that this agreement had been negotiated, and expecting that legislation would be moved within both parliaments, gave six months notice that they would cease purchasing the product from the company in my electorate. It was only at that time that Albright and Wilson became aware of this proposed change and the negative impact it will have on them. Immediately we entered into discussion with the then Minister for Trade and the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources. We are obviously now dealing with the current Minister for Trade. Unfortunately, the responses from the government have all been interested and polite but not that it is prepared to take any action. Evidence to the committee and elsewhere seems to show that the government and the department are hiding behind the fact that the company was not aware at the earliest stage of this proposed change and therefore, by not being part of the negotiations, had missed its chance. I do not accept that that is an adequate response when there is still plenty of time to add this proposed change to the agreement. It is a small change. I understand that the New Zealand government is implacably opposed to any change, as no doubt people always are when negotiations have been completed. But if our government had really shown any will or interest in picking this up on behalf of working Australians, I think the New Zealand government might well have considered the issue differently. I am disappointed that Minister Truss has written back basically saying: ‘We’ve taken it seriously, but we’re not going to do anything else. New Zealand is not prepared to reopen negotiations, and we won’t look at any sort of exception.’ The government also refers to an absence of industry consensus on this issue. I would say that it is more than an absence of industry consensus. It would be more accurate to say that the industry organisations have entirely conflicting responsibilities in this area. They have interests that can run completely counter to the interests of individual companies. Unfortunately, in this situation companies like Unilever Australia, with its relationship with Unilever in New Zealand, is a bigger organisation in the industry group than Albright and Wilson. The industry group is not prepared to make representations on behalf of one member when it might affect another member, even though Unilever New Zealand is an entirely discrete company. It is very disappointing that the government was not prepared to take any action. There are 65 people in my electorate who are quite likely to lose their jobs as a result of the government’s failure to take any action on this issue. It could have been averted. I do not believe that the New Zealand government would be as reticent if the Australian government were prepared to seriously engage on this issue. All members of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties recommended—and the dissenting report made an even stronger recommendation—that this issue should have been dealt with, that it had slipped through the department’s consultation process for whatever reason and that negotiations on it should be entered into immediately. But that has not happened. Given that the government has been determined not to take on this issue, we will give it one last opportunity. In the consideration in detail stage of this debate, we will be moving an amendment which would provide for an exception for this line item. We do not believe that there is any reason for the government not to support it. We will be calling on all members of the House who would be similarly concerned about working people in their electorates who were at risk of losing their jobs because of this action that has been taken to vote with us. If we do not get to the consideration in detail stage in the debate today, the government might reflect differently and be prepared to accept this change. Otherwise, should the loss of these jobs come to pass, it will be on their heads. It will show that there is generally no preparedness on behalf of the government to take account of the interests of the community. I would like to indicate that we have taken as many steps as possible to support Australian industry, particularly the manufacturer Albright and Wilson and their staff who are situated in my electorate. We have pursued two different trade ministers on this issue. We have been in consultations with the industry minister. Labor members, through the treaties committee, tabled a dissenting report urging immediate negotiations on this issue. I would like to record my thanks to the member for Swan and a number of his colleagues on the treaties committee for pursuing this issue. But still the government has failed to take any action. We will be asking for an exemption. It is not new to have an exemption in these sorts of agreements. It is not adequate to say that it will be dealt with later. The jobs at Albright and Wilson will be lost and people’s livelihoods will be ruined. The business may well go under completely. All that the government will have delivered through this legislation is the ability for a New Zealand company to buy dumped Chinese product instead of Australian product. That is all that will be achieved if the government votes against our proposed amendment. That is not a good outcome for closer economic relations between Australia and New Zealand. There is no possible excuse for the government to avoid an opportunity to support the maintenance of $7 million worth of trade between our two countries. I urge the government to reconsider what it is doing. We cannot afford to lose this Australian industry. We know that manufacturing contributes not only to our export performance but also to our research and development. Albright and Wilson employ chemists, administrators and chemical workers. They have industry partnerships with research institutions that encourage product development and innovation. All of this is being put at risk because of the government’s stubborn determination not to take account of the interests of this company. The government has made exemptions in the past. It has made them for gentlemen’s apparel. There are other industries with similar exemptions. There should be one in place for this product, which is made in my electorate. I will be urging the government when we consider the bill in detail to accept my proposed amendment so that this agreement will be able to go ahead with the support of members not just on the government’s side of the House but on our side as well. 123 20:34:00 Ruddock, Philip, MP 0J4 Berowra LP Attorney-General 1 0 Mr RUDDOCK —in reply—May I firstly thank the members who have contributed in this debate tonight. I notice the list is somewhat shorter than I originally anticipated, but I thank the members for Griffith, Gellibrand and Cook for their contributions. I note that they have participated in the debate on the proposed amendments to the Australia-New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement which will allow for a change of tariff classification method to be used along with a regional value content requirement in determining whether goods meet the rules of origin for the CER. Together with the current last process of manufacture method, importers on both sides of the Tasman will have the option of using either method until 31 December 2011, when the current method will cease to operate. The amendments will simplify the process of determining whether a good from New Zealand is a New Zealand originating good. The current last process of manufacture method can be administratively burdensome for a manufacturer and can lead to uncertainty because of exchange rates, for example. The proposed amendments will bring greater certainty and be administratively simpler. They will improve efficiency by allowing greater use of imports not produced in Australia or New Zealand, without adverse impact on the ability to claim origin. They are consistent with the international trend to use the CTC approach. I commend the amendments in cementing even further the strong economic and trade relationship between Australia and New Zealand. It has grown significantly since the entry into force of the CER in 1983. I notice that the member for Gellibrand is proposing an amendment to the regional value content provision, which will require goods classified to be subject to a 50 per cent regional value content in the rules of origin regulation. Goods classified in 3402.20 are subject to a rule already agreed to by Australia and New Zealand. This rule was discussed and agreed by the industry concerned. Our view is that an amendment along the lines that the member proposes would need negotiations to be reopened with New Zealand, which has indicated that it is not prepared to discuss amendments to annex C of the CER. The other matter raised was the dumping of goods classified under 3402.20 through New Zealand. The Australian legislation provides that a third-party anti-dumping application can be made. This legislation is consistent with the WTO requirements and, to date, we are not aware of any such action being commenced. I make those observations in relation to the proposed amendment. Obviously, when it is moved, we will be opposing it. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. 124 Bill—by leave—taken as a whole. 124 20:38:00 Roxon, Nicola, MP 83K Gellibrand ALP 0 0 Ms ROXON —I move:          Schedule 1, item 1, page 9, after subclause (5), (after line 15) insert       (5A)    If the goods are goods of the kind specified in tariff item 3402.20. in Annex G to ANZCERTA Product Specific Rules of Origin published in March 2006 the regulations must specify that the goods are required to have a regional value content of at least 50%. I think I have already covered the purpose of the amendment I am moving: it is to ensure that a business in my electorate is able to continue successfully manufacturing products and employing 65-odd constituents. The amendment I am moving is a very small and simple exemption that the government could make that would ensure that those jobs in my electorate are protected. They could agree to exempt tariff line 3402.20 from the changes that are proposed in this bill. As I flagged, the government has repeatedly ignored numerous representations by the company, me and my colleagues and the recommendations on this change of its own Joint Standing Committee on Treaties. The government has indicated it will not pursue negotiations with New Zealand on this tariff line. They have given no indication that the necessary exemption will be included in regulations, a method that would also be possible. Labor is moving this amendment because the government has failed to negotiate in any way to save these 65 jobs in my electorate. I must remind the House that asking for such an exemption is not new. The regulations to this bill will include exemptions for the gentlemen’s apparel and automotive industries, as has already been discussed. The government recognised that cheaper, dumped products from countries like China could hurt these Australian industries, but this amendment simply provides the same protection to Australian detergent manufacturing and the $7 million in exports generated by Albright and Wilson as is given to some other industries. The amendment ensures that the existing method for calculating regional content for the tariff line is retained. Without this amendment, Albright and Wilson estimate that they will lose at least 20 per cent of the factory turnover at Yarraville and that this will put all of their jobs in jeopardy. I urge the government to reconsider its position. It is a small amendment. It is an easy amendment; it does not have an impact on the rest of the negotiated agreement. We strongly support this amendment. 125 20:40:00 Ruddock, Philip, MP 0J4 Berowra LP Attorney-General 1 0 Mr RUDDOCK —Given the comments I made, it is a bit rough of the honourable member for Gellibrand to say that the government has ignored her constituents. I will simply make the point that the government became aware of the concerns raised by Albright and Wilson regarding the impact of these new rules of origin only after negotiations with New Zealand and the industry had been completed. We made every effort to see whether the company’s requested existing tariff item, detergents, could be retained exclusively for up to five years. The Minister for Trade, Warren Truss, met with the company in early November 2006. The Minister for Trade personally raised this issue with New Zealand’s trade minister, Mr Goff, at the recent APEC meetings in Hanoi on 14 November. As I said earlier, New Zealand is unwilling to reopen the finely balanced package which was agreed. Consultations with the Australian industry associations established that there was no consensus on Albright and Wilson’s request. That is the case but we will remain in consultation with the company. We will keep it under review, but obviously an amendment as proposed, which has not been agreed with New Zealand, is not something that can be accepted by the government. Question put: That the amendment (Ms Roxon’s) be agreed to. 20:46:00 The House divided.     (The Deputy Speaker—Hon. IR Causley) 45 Adams, D.G.H. Albanese, A.N. Bevis, A.R. Bird, S. Bowen, C. Burke, A.S. Byrne, A.M. Crean, S.F. Elliot, J. Ellis, A.L. Ellis, K. Ferguson, L.D.T. Fitzgibbon, J.A. Garrett, P. Georganas, S. George, J. Gibbons, S.W. Gillard, J.E. Griffin, A.P. Hall, J.G. * Hatton, M.J. Hayes, C.P. Hoare, K.J. Irwin, J. Jenkins, H.A. Kerr, D.J.C. King, C.F. Lawrence, C.M. Macklin, J.L. McMullan, R.F. Murphy, J.P. O’Connor, G.M. Owens, J. Plibersek, T. Price, L.R.S. * Quick, H.V. Ripoll, B.F. Roxon, N.L. Rudd, K.M. Sawford, R.W. Sercombe, R.C.G. Smith, S.F. Swan, W.M. Thomson, K.J. Wilkie, K. 76 Abbott, A.J. Anderson, J.D. Andrews, K.J. Bailey, F.E. Baird, B.G. Baker, M. Baldwin, R.C. Barresi, P.A. Bartlett, K.J. Billson, B.F. Bishop, B.K. Bishop, J.I. Broadbent, R. Brough, M.T. Cadman, A.G. Ciobo, S.M. Cobb, J.K. Dutton, P.C. Elson, K.S. Entsch, W.G. Farmer, P.F. Fawcett, D. Ferguson, M.D. Forrest, J.A. Gambaro, T. Gash, J. Georgiou, P. Haase, B.W. Hardgrave, G.D. Hartsuyker, L. Henry, S. Hockey, J.B. Hull, K.E. * Hunt, G.A. Jensen, D. Johnson, M.A. Jull, D.F. Katter, R.C. Keenan, M. Kelly, D.M. Kelly, J.M. Ley, S.P. Lloyd, J.E. Macfarlane, I.E. Markus, L. May, M.A. McArthur, S. * McGauran, P.J. Mirabella, S. Moylan, J.E. Nairn, G.R. Nelson, B.J. Neville, P.C. Prosser, G.D. Pyne, C. Randall, D.J. Richardson, K. Robb, A. Ruddock, P.M. Schultz, A. Scott, B.C. Secker, P.D. Slipper, P.N. Smith, A.D.H. Somlyay, A.M. Southcott, A.J. Stone, S.N. Tollner, D.W. Truss, W.E. Tuckey, C.W. Turnbull, M. Vaile, M.A.J. Vale, D.S. Vasta, R. Wakelin, B.H. Wood, J. Question negatived. 126 Mr RUDDOCK (Berowra —Attorney-General) 20:56:00 —by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. 126 BILLS R2656 126 Debate resumed from 2 November, on motion by Ms Julie Bishop: That this bill be now read a second time. 126 20:57:00 Macklin, Jenny, MP PG6 Jagajaga ALP 0 0 Ms MACKLIN —Labor will oppose the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006. This is the latest instalment in a series of three related extreme, arrogant and heavy-handed bills. Labor will continue to defend the right of the community, including Indigenous communities, to be properly and fully consulted before decisions are made about the location of radioactive waste dumps. This bill amends the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977 and the principal act, the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act 2005, to make land nominations as distinct from decisions not reviewable under the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act, provides that failure to comply with the site nomination rules in the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act 2005 will not affect the validity of the minister’s approval of a nomination and removes any entitlement to procedural fairness in relation to a nomination of a site. The bill also amends the principal 2005 act to provide for the return of nominated Aboriginal land used for a radioactive waste management facility when no longer required for the facility and indemnifies traditional owners following the land return against any damages claims arising from the use of the land for a facility. The bill continues the Howard government’s history of removing the voice of local communities in this government’s campaign to impose a waste dump on the Northern Territory. This campaign should be seen for exactly what it is—a taster for the methods the Howard government intends to use in imposing nuclear power stations and high-level waste dumps on unsuspecting communities right around Australia: tricky tactics like denying real intentions before an election then springing it on a community straight after, or misusing parliamentary numbers to override every legislative right, protection and safeguard normally available to everyday Australians when they want to have their say on government decisions which affect them. Accordingly, I move: That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: “ the House: refuses the Bill a second reading, because of the Howard Government’s: continuing arrogant approach imposing a nuclear waste dump on the people of the Northern Territory without proper scientific assessment and consultation processes; broken election commitments to not locate a waste dump in the Northern Territory; overriding of many Federal, State and Territory legal protections, rights and safeguards; destruction of any recourse to procedural fairness provisions for anyone wishing to challenge the Minister’s decision to impose a waste dump on the people of the Northern Territory; continuing and aggravated disregard of the International Atomic Energy Commission’s recommendations on good social practices like consultation and transparency in relation to nuclear waste; failure to deliver a national waste repository after ten long years in government, and, in light of the Howard Government’s imposition of a nuclear waste dump on the Northern Territory community, and the recent High Court decision in the Workchoices case, expresses deep concern that the Howard Government will override community objections and State and Territory laws to impose nuclear reactors and high level nuclear waste dumps on local communities across Australia”. To begin with I want to remind the House of the circumstances underlying the 2005 bill pushed through this parliament late last year. 10000 SPEAKER, The The SPEAKER —Order! It being 9.00 pm, the debate is interrupted. 127 21:00:00 House adjourned at 9.01 pm 127 NOTICES The following notices were given: EZ5 Abbott, Tony, MP Mr Abbott to move: That the following sessional orders be adopted as permanent standing orders: In standing order 1, Maximum speaking times, the section of the table headed Committee and delegation reports on Mondays be: Committee and delegation reports on Mondays in the House Each Member in the Main Committee Each Member  (standing orders 39, 40, 192(b)) 10 mins maximum, as allotted by the Selection Committee 10 mins Dissent motion    Whole debate   Mover   Seconder   Member next speaking   Any other Member   (standing order 87) 30 mins 10 mins 5 mins 10 mins 5 mins   Standing order 39: 39 Presentation of reports Delegation reports deemed presented (in accordance with sessional order 39(d)(i)) in the Main Committee Two Members 5 mins each SU5 Vaile, Mark, MP Mr Vaile to present a bill for an act relating to airspace administration and regulation, and for related purposes. (Airspace Bill 2006) SU5 Vaile, Mark, MP Mr Vaile to present a bill for an act to provide for consequential matters relating to the enactment of the Airspace Act 2006, and for other purposes. (Airspace (Consequentials and Other Measures) Bill 2006) WN6 Macfarlane, Ian, MP Mr Ian Macfarlane to  present a bill for an act to amend the law relating to gas, and for other purposes. (Australian Energy Market Amendment (Gas Legislation) Bill 2006) WN6 Macfarlane, Ian, MP Mr Ian Macfarlane to  present a bill for an act to amend the Energy Efficiency Opportunities Act 2006, and for related purposes. (Energy Efficiency Opportunities Amendment Bill 2006) 2006-11-28 The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Barresi) took the chair at 4.00 pm. 132 STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS 132 132 16:00:00 Swan, Wayne, MP 2V5 Lilley ALP 0 0 Mr SWAN —Last week Queensland Racing released a redevelopment proposal for a Brisbane racing precinct located in the Lilley electorate. It involves the closure of the Doomben racecourse and the redevelopment and upgrading of the adjoining Eagle Farm racecourse. It requires the amalgamation of the Brisbane Turf Club and the Queensland Turf Club. This is not the first time that a proposal has been made to restructure racing in Brisbane. Working with our local community some years ago, I was able to help stop a similar proposal to close down both tracks and relocate racing to an area between Brisbane and Ipswich. The latest proposal results from the breakdown in amalgamation and related discussions between the two race clubs and the rejection by Queensland Racing of an $8 million upgrade for the QTC. The main concern I have with regard to the proposal is that it now must be subjected to genuine and extensive community and stakeholder consultation. The Doomben course is owned by the 2,000 members of the BTC. The wishes of the members of the club, a significant number of whom live in Lilley, must get proper consideration. The trainers, stable staff, jockeys and racecourse workers who live in the suburbs around the tracks need to be consulted as well. But the most important group that must have a genuine say is the local community—the families who live principally to the north and south of Doomben. The intention is to close down Doomben and sell the very valuable land on which it is located for commercial or residential development, with the proceeds to fund the Eagle Farm upgrade. The latest proposal inevitably means intensive residential or commercial redevelopment that would impact on the local community. The views of residents must be taken into account. Any redevelopment must not just be about raising the money needed to fund the upgrading of Eagle Farm. It is important that the balance be right—the balance between the need to fund the redevelopment and the need to meet the wishes of local residents. This can only be done through an extensive and genuine consultation process. It needs to be overseen not just by Queensland Racing but by the Queensland government. The Liberal Mayor of Brisbane believes Doomben should be converted to parkland and open space. There will be strong community support for a substantial part of the area to be parkland or open space, as well as for affordable housing, if the proposal goes ahead. That view must not be ignored. The racing industry is a major contributor to employment and economic activity in Lilley; it is a major part of the Brisbane and Queensland economies. The proposal would undoubtedly strengthen the racing industry’s long-term viability. Apart from the need for consultation, my main concern about the proposal is that it must not be accompanied by threats by Queensland Racing to simply take away Doomben race dates if members reject it. By doing so, it would be forcing the closure of a major racetrack and one of the few in Australia actually owned by the membership. The proposal by Queensland Racing deserves proper consideration and evaluation by all stakeholders and by the racing industry and the local community in particular. We must ensure that happens. It is vital that Queensland Racing, the Queensland government and the race clubs concerned ensure that all stakeholders are fully involved in the consultation process that must take place now that Queensland Racing has shown its hand. 133 133 16:03:00 Pyne, Chris, MP 9V5 Sturt LP Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing 1 0 Mr PYNE —I rise in the House today— 00APG Smith, Anthony, MP Mr Anthony Smith —The Main Committee. 9V5 Pyne, Chris, MP Mr PYNE —I rise in the Main Committee today—I thank my honourable friend for his correction—to note the passing of a man called James B Jarvis, a former Lord Mayor of Adelaide from 1985 to 1987. James Jarvis died a couple of weeks ago. He was a noteworthy lord mayor of the great city of Adelaide, the 73rd lord mayor. He was responsible for implementing the City of Adelaide plan. He was also the lord mayor during the visit to Adelaide of His Holiness Pope John Paul II and Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II and he carried off both of those events with terrific charm and aplomb. He was something of a fixture on the Adelaide scene in terms of charity work and a major contributor to public policy in Adelaide and South Australia. He also happened to be a very dear and close friend of my family. The Jarvis family and the Pyne family were linked inextricably by spending about 20 summers together at Hallett Cove and Victor Harbor. We only stopped getting together during summers because our families became too large. His very good wife Levaun Jarvis passed away about 10 years ago. She had the distinction of being a distant cousin of my mother, the stepsister of Amanda Vanstone and a significant figure in the South Australian Liberal Party. She was the person who first got me involved in Liberal politics. I send my condolences to his second wife Sky, whom he married after Levaun’s death. I send my condolences to his children, Timothy, Nicholas, Edwina, James, Adam, Benjamin and Samuel. Members can understand why we could not find a beach house big enough for the five Pyne children, the seven Jarvis children and all the various parents. Jim played a crucial role in South Australia. It is sad that an era has come to an end with the death of both Jim and Levaun. His children are wonderful people. Most of them still live in South Australia. His son Nicholas gave the eulogy at Jim’s funeral and said that his happiest memory of his father was watching Jim and my father painting—two amateur painters—on the beach at Hallett Cove. I wanted to make sure that I took the opportunity to note my great respect for the Jarvis family and for Jim and the contribution that he made to Adelaide and South Australia. 133 133 16:06:00 Vamvakinou, Maria, MP 00AMT Calwell ALP 0 0 Ms VAMVAKINOU —Mr Speaker, 25 November each year marks the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. This day aims to raise public awareness about the many forms of violence that women around the world still experience and calls on the international community to present a united front against such violence. The date, 25 November, was specifically chosen by the United Nations to coincide with the beginning of the 16 days of activism against gender violence, an annual campaign that sees organisations across the world actively coordinate their efforts in calling for an end to violence against women. Each year 16 days of activism end on 10 December, which is United Nations Human Rights Day. The focus of this year’s 16 days of action campaign is to promote awareness of gender violence as first and foremost a human rights issue and to articulate a response to such violence from within a human rights framework. One such example in which gender violence is best tackled from a human rights perspective is the trafficking of women into Australia for the sex trade. Recently I had the privilege of meeting with a delegation of nuns from the Catholic Religious Orders Against Trafficking, many of whom work directly with victims of sex slavery in Australia. The purpose of their visit was to raise awareness of human trafficking and sex slavery in Australia and to lobby for the introduction of a new visa framework for victims of human trafficking, grounded in human rights rather than in Australia’s criminal justice system. At present a victim of human trafficking only becomes eligible for entry into Australia’s trafficking visa framework if she is able to assist authorities with the criminal investigation and possible prosecution of those responsible for bringing her to Australia. Entry into the trafficking visa framework is through a bridging visa F, which is granted for a maximum of 30 days. If at the end of this period law enforcement officers decide to continue investigating a possible crime then the victim is issued with a criminal justice visa. In both instances victims are entitled to social support. As the nuns I spoke to from the Catholic Religious Orders Against Trafficking explained, this visa regime leaves many victims of trafficking out in the cold, with absolutely no support or protection to speak of. Based on the findings of the United Nations CDAW report released earlier this year, the nuns were calling for the extension of temporary protection visas and support services to all victims of trafficking, regardless of whether they are able to assist in criminal investigations or not, and for the development of a complementary protection style visa for victims of trafficking based on claims to protection on humanitarian grounds. A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 4.09 pm to 4.21 pm 00AMT Vamvakinou, Maria, MP Ms VAMVAKINOU —The arguments for visa reform put forward by the nuns I met were often compelling and the examples they gave of women who had slipped through the cracks of Australia’s existing trafficking visa framework were often heart-wrenching and horrific. This is an issue that deserves greater attention and more detailed debate in this place. I want to thank all the nuns who came to Canberra to raise awareness of this issue and to encourage all of us to take the action necessary to address a matter which goes to the core of human rights abuse against women. (Time expired). 134 134 16:21:00 Richardson, Kym, MP E0B Kingston LP 1 0 Mr RICHARDSON —I rise today to give recognition to a local primary school within my electorate of Kingston in the southern suburbs of Adelaide—the Hackham East Primary School. I acknowledge the students from reception through to year 7, their principal, Mr Bob Thiele, and staff, parents and volunteers. The primary school, and in particular a year 7 student, Dirk Kincaid, sent me an invitation to attend a school performance called Snakes and Ladders. Let me share it with the House so that it can be recorded in Hansard for all Australians to read. I subsequently responded to the invitation and attended the Hackham East Primary School Snakes and Ladders performance at the Noarlunga TAFE theatre. This performance involved drama, music and dance. But what was tremendous was that it involved all age groups within the school, from reception through to year 7. I believe this performance from start to finish was one of the very best I have ever seen. The theme involved the mixing of younger students with older students. The excellent drama, music and dance performances they all gave in their respective costumes were simply a credit to them and their school. I mentioned the theme of the performance. It featured a journey into fantasy lands along a snakes and ladders board. The message was clear for the key young actress on her journey as well as the other performers from reception through to year 7 and other students, parents and anybody else lucky enough to see this performance. Mr Thiele should be acknowledged for his tremendous leadership with respect to this performance and the message it provided. I found that Mr Thiele actually has a significant talent in this area. He not only wrote the entire format of the play but also arranged and organised background settings and drafted the songs and dance steps. Furthermore, on every occasion that the school gave its performance to the community, he produced and directed the students in this magnificent display—a job very well done. I would also like to make mention of the tremendous array of costumes worn by the students, which again was a feature. I understand a mum of a former student, current cleaner and volunteer at the school, June Liston, designed and made all of the costumes. This again was a magnificent feat and June was assisted by another parent, volunteer Michelle Glazbrook. There was, as always, a team of staff and parent volunteers who worked behind the scenes, and I would like to congratulate them for the part they played in assisting the students to provide this performance. In closing, I applaud the Hackham East Primary School Snakes and Ladders reception to year 7 drama, music and dance performance. The role that Principal Bob Thiele played, the assistance by key volunteers, staff and parents and, most importantly, the message and tremendous performance by the students were of the highest standard and should be acknowledged, as I have in parliament in my position as their federal member. 135 135 16:24:00 Grierson, Sharon, MP 00AMP Newcastle ALP 0 0 Ms GRIERSON —I wish to draw attention to a recent decision regarding the delivery of veterans home care services in the Newcastle and Hunter region. This program provides services that include personal care, domestic assistance, home and garden maintenance, and respite care to eligible veterans, war widows and war widowers. These intensive personal services reduce the need for hospitalisation and institutional care and enable veterans to live in their own homes for longer. In the Newcastle and Hunter region, 2,120 veterans received home care services last year, some 500 of whom live in my electorate of Newcastle. Veterans’ Home Care Program clients are the most vulnerable in our veteran community and many suffer from chronic illness, dementia, post-traumatic stress and other neurological disorders. Given the intensely personal nature of the services provided, veterans often develop a bond with their carers and have the right to expect continuity of care wherever possible. The Newcastle and District Nursing Service has been a provider of these services since its inception in 2001, providing personalised services to more than 450 veterans in the Hunter region. It is not the sole provider in the Hunter but it has a proven track record, with an extremely high level of client satisfaction: 98 per cent of its clients rate its services as either very good or good. Regrettably, its contract expires on 16 December and I am advised that the NDNS will no longer be involved in the provision of veterans home care services in the Hunter. That this agency, a local agency with a proven track record, will no longer be involved in the delivery of veterans home care services in my region is part of a deeply worrying trend occurring under the Howard government. I understand that the new provider for the Hunter is a large national agency called Stanhope Health Care Services, whose head office and administrative centre is in Melbourne and who have no proven track record of ever providing veterans home care services in the Hunter. If recent experiences of the imposition of other centralised models of service delivery in the Hunter are anything to go by, it is hard to imagine how this new service will be able to maintain, let alone improve on, the quality of existing veterans home care services in our region. That local agencies with a proven track record and strong commitment to local communities are being overlooked in tender processes that appear to give preference to large national agencies is a disturbing trend that has grown rapidly under the Howard government. It is a trend that could have grave consequences for local communities, and it must be stopped. It actually takes the local solutions out of service delivery. With fewer than 18 days to go before the start of the new contracts, I call on the minister to stop riding roughshod over successful local providers and to overturn this seemingly inequitable and potentially calamitous decision. At the very least, the minister should ensure adequate continuity of care for the 450 veterans who will feel the brunt of this decision by allowing them to stay with the NDNS while an inquiry into this tender process is conducted. Just how much weight is given to local service delivery? This is the least the government can do for the 450 veterans facing great uncertainty and the 35 local NDNS employees facing redundancy just before Christmas. 136 136 16:27:00 Slipper, Peter, MP 0V5 Fisher LP 1 0 Mr SLIPPER —I wish to commend a number of local groups from my electorate on their hard work in making the Sunshine Coast community an even better place in which to live. I am sure the region I represent—characterised by magnificent beaches, lovely weather and warm, friendly people—is the envy of many other honourable members of this House. While many here come to the Sunshine Coast for holidays and to get away from the rat-race, I am proud to say that this holiday destination is my home every day of the year. It is the volunteer organisations that help to make the place that much more special. I was recently proud to announce that 14 Sunshine Coast volunteer groups will share in almost $29,000 in Australian government funds to help them buy much-needed equipment. These funds come to them through the Volunteer Small Equipment Grants Program, which assists not-for-profit groups with grants of up to $3,000 to purchase small equipment needed for their ongoing service to the community. These grants help to meet the equipment needs of organisations that otherwise may ordinarily struggle to afford the equipment. This equipment helps to make the work of the volunteers easier, safer and more enjoyable. This is one of the funding programs that I particularly enjoy in that it meets the very practical needs of important, hardworking groups. While the Volunteer Small Equipment Grants Program attracts relatively little media interest because the amounts of money are relatively small, it is a wonderful program that assists a wide range of groups in a very targeted way. For example, the Kawana Tennis Club will receive $1,800 under this latest funding round. The money will go towards paying for a portable PA system, a practical allocation of funds that will help this club function at an improved level. This club holds various mid-level tournaments, and the PA system will greatly assist. Other organisations to share in funds totalling $28,825 are: the Ananda Marga River School P&F Association, Maleny, with $2,008 for a trailer, knife set, tools and wheelbarrows; the Caloundra SES Group, with $2,726 for an electronic white board; Glenview State School P&C, with $1,776 for a first-aid kit, fridge, outdoor table and benches, stereo/CD player and urn; Guides Queensland in Kawana, with $2,504 for a stereo/CD player, television/monitor and video/DVD player; Little Mountain Quilters, Little Mountain, with $2,700 for a quilting frame and a sewing machine; Mooloolah Public Hall Association, Mooloolah, with $1,340 for a ladder, a table and a vacuum cleaner; Maleny RSL subbranch, with $2,352 for a blower cleaner, a chainsaw, a high-pressure cleaner, a table and a whipper snipper; Kawana State Emergency Service, with $2,300; Sunshine Coast Jazz Club, with $2,279; the Scout Association at Buderim, with $623; and the Vietnam Veterans’ Association Sunshine Coast Branch, Cotton Tree, with $2,600 for a brush-cutter, gardening tools, a mower, power tools and trailers. Volunteers carry out a very important role in our society. I commend these organisations for their good work and I welcome the Australian government’s support for these volunteer organisations. (Time expired) 137 137 16:30:00 Garrett, Peter, MP HV4 Kingsford Smith ALP 0 0 Mr GARRETT —The Howard government likes to emphasise that it and security go hand in hand, yet in reality they are far apart. Issues of work security, wage security and long-term employment security in the electorate of Kingsford Smith are critical and the government’s Work Choices legislation bears down upon that electorate with considerable force. Likewise, on the issue of climate change and the impact that it is having on the environment, today’s report by the CSIRO that states that there is unprecedented growth in carbon dioxide emissions, churning out at record rates of CO in the atmosphere, emphasises this very fact. Yet Mr Howard’s response is to go ‘clean and green and nuclear,’ as he describes it—a costly waste-producing and insecurity-increasing technology. Mr Howard claims that he supports the Switkowski report, that we should look at the matter seriously and that there are prospects for 25 nuclear power stations in Australia. Be that as it may, that is not how the people of Kingsford Smith feel. This week the people of Queensland, under Premier Beattie, legislated to ban nuclear power plants. But, regrettably, as we have seen in the past, the Commonwealth can override the states on this particular issue. Especially where there is Commonwealth land and a ready supply of water, and particularly where a prospective site might be close to large populations, there are locations that announce themselves as possible locations for a nuclear power plant. I refer to one such location: Malabar Headland in the electorate of Kingsford Smith—already identified as a possible site for a desalination plant. It readily lends itself to any prospective plan that a federal government might have to impose nuclear power plants on the people of Kingsford Smith. I want to emphasise at this point that the people of Kingsford Smith do not wish to see a nuclear power plant in their electorate. They want to see sensible, prudent and environmentally sane responses to climate change, but in no way whatsoever are they keen to have a nuclear power plant located at Malabar Headland. I call upon the government to specifically rule out the location of Malabar Headland as a prospective site for any nuclear power plant. It is time that we recognise that the solution for greenhouse gas emissions lies in investing in a range of renewables, in energy efficiency, in a suite of alternative energy sources, in gas cogeneration and in clean coal. All of those are now available. All of those are available to meet our existing energy demands and, in addition, not increase the amount of emissions which go into the atmosphere and contribute to harmful climate change. But to consider in any way that we can meet the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by embarking on the expensive, time-consuming and risky exercise of creating a number of sites for the construction of nuclear power plants up and down the eastern seaboard of Australia is fanciful and irresponsible. For the people of Kingsford Smith, we need to hear from this government about nuclear power plants— (Time expired) 138 138 16:33:00 Smith, Anthony, MP 00APG Casey LP 1 0 Mr ANTHONY SMITH —Today I want to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of a large group of volunteers who ran the Lilydale Show on Saturday, 18 November. It is an annual event that has been a fixture on the calendar in Lilydale for many years. It runs for the whole weekend and a whole host of community groups and hardworking individuals make it the success it is every year, and this year was no exception. I particularly pay tribute to the Executive Committee of the Lilydale Agricultural and Horticultural Show; the president, Mrs Mary Burfort; the secretary, Ms Kathie Mason; the treasurer, Mr Bob Higgs; the vice-president, Ms Jenny Gell; and, Ms Joan Caldwell and Mr Albert Veerman. I also pay tribute to the more than 300 volunteers from a range of community groups who worked tirelessly over the weekend and in the days before. Those groups include: the CFA, the local Scouts, the Lions Club, the Guides, the SES, St John’s Ambulance, Rovers, Venturers, Rotary, Neighbourhood Watch, Yarra Valley Vintage Machinery, Goldminers, Grace Community Church, Puffing Billy and the StormCo church group. The committee worked tirelessly to make the show a success and more than 300 volunteers were organised. The planning by the committee takes 10 months of the year. It was a very successful event and, like all years before it, the number of people who turned up over the Saturday and Sunday exceeded last year’s number. I pay tribute to all of them for putting on such a wonderful event. 138 16:35:00 Burke, Anna, MP 83S Chisholm ALP 0 0 Ms BURKE —On 23 October this year I held a fantastic event: a school environmental forum at Syndal South Primary School. We held it at Syndal South because three of their very enterprising students had written to me about their concerns about the degradation that is happening to their environment. The Chisholm environment forum proved that young Australians are passionate about saving our planet. They had some wonderful ideas about how we can protect our environment. Some suggestions included encouraging native flora in our parks and schools, phasing out plastic bags, recycling water and increasing wind power and solar energy. It was great to see kids getting really excited about ways in which we can protect our environment. Students were deeply concerned about global warming and water sustainability, even asking when we were going to sign the Kyoto protocol. It is great to know the next generation is so committed to saving our planet. School students from all the primary schools in my electorate were invited to attend. The majority of primary schools in the electorate did attend, sending over six to eight students predominantly from grade 6. They were a very vibrant bunch who entertained me and Mr Albanese for quite some time on the day with their concerns about the environment and their suggestions. They are full of wonderful suggestions which, if we took them up, I am sure our planet would be the healthier for it. One letter I received in reply from St Peter’s Catholic Primary School in Clayton says: We would like to thank-you on behalf of St. Peters Primary School. It was a great pleasure to attend the Environmental Forum at Syndal South Primary School. We have written this letter to inform you what we think were the most important issues discussed at the forum. The first important issue that should be further discussed is water. This is important because water is vital to the human body and is one of Mother Nature’s main resources. We think a solution for this problem is to use sea water to flush the toilets, have heavier water restrictions, have cleaning companies that will recycle water and for schools and houses to have water tanks. The other issue that should be further discussed is the issue of Greenhouse Gases that are hurting our environment. This is important to us because the Greenhouse Gases are going into the atmosphere and endangering our animals, our environment and most importantly ourselves. Our solution to this problem would be to cut down on the use of appliances that use Greenhouse Gases. Another solution would be to cut down on buying food that is grown in other states. We would like people to start buying food in our own states. This is because the car or truck that transports the food from one state to another is sending Greenhouse Gases into the atmosphere. This would reduce the Greenhouse Gases that are going into the atmosphere. Once again thank-you for organising the environmental forum. It is nice to know that our politicians will listen to young people. I was more than happy to listen to the young people on the day, who came up with some great suggestions. Others on the day were concerned that there was not enough funding going into ensuring that people put water tanks in their homes and that people should not be littering our environment. They asked constantly: Why do we still use plastic bags? Why does the government not subsidise water tanks and solar panels? Why are we not using wind power? Why don’t we ban smoking? Why don’t people use waste water—and, if they are wasting water, why don’t they get fined? Why is whaling continuing in Japan? Why don’t we use recycled water? Why won’t the government give to schools so they can have environmental programs? And some questions at the end were very informed about— (Time expired) 139 139 16:38:00 Gambaro, Teresa, MP 9K6 Petrie LP Parliamentary Secretary (Foreign Affairs) 1 0 Ms GAMBARO —I am very pleased to follow the member for Chisholm, because I have some great water-saving programs that the government has funded through local Work for the Dole participants. I want to talk about a terrific program in the Petrie electorate that involves both a valuable educational resource and Work for the Dole participants. Last Wednesday I had the honour of presenting the Work for the Dole series to the graduates of the Waterwise Ways program. During the last six months the Work for the Dole participants in this excellent program have been provided assistance by Mission Australia and have produced an interesting and timely educational booklet and CD-ROM on water conservation. The Australian government has provided funding of $24,000 to Mission Australia for the program, and I congratulate them for their initiative. I want to mention Angie O’Connor, Mission Australia’s Redcliffe service manager for Work for the Dole; Kristy Wyvil, Work for the Dole coordinator; Matthew Bender, Mission Australia community work coordinator; and Ben Cossalter, Waterwise Ways project supervisor. During the six-month involvement in the projects, the participants developed invaluable skills in the use of computers as well as administration, research and publishing, and they have encouraged the public to use resources such as the local library and departments to source the relevant information. The participants also regularly used valuable work skills, such as being able to use general office equipment, computers, printers, photocopiers and laminating machines. They became familiar with Microsoft packages and basic skills like typing, publishing and collation of data. The project participants can truly be proud of their contribution to the local community and, under the Work for the Dole program, there are many essential services being done that otherwise would have been left undone. Like much of Australia, Brisbane and Queensland are in the grip of the worst drought and water restrictions in living history. We are currently on level 4 restrictions, and I fear that we will go to level 5 restrictions very soon if we do not have any rain in the January period. This comprehensive CD-ROM will now be available to students in the Petrie electorate and in regions. It will help them have a win-win situation and show them how to participate in water-saving activities. The Work for the Dole program has always been derided by the other side of politics—they say it does not have any reality on the ground, it is not practical and its benefits are not recognised—but I spoke to those graduates last week and not only were they proud of their program and the contribution that they had made but also they had very strong aspirations for the future. I want to congratulate them and place on record the wonderful support that has been given to some 80,500 funded places in the Work for the Dole activities in the financial year, including 16,400 full-time placements at a cost of $217 million. Since the Work for the Dole program was introduced in 1997, it has been a huge success. (Time expired) 10000 Bishop, Bronwyn (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. BK Bishop)—Order! In accordance with the resolution agreed to in the House earlier, the time for members’ statements has concluded. 140 BILLS R2618 Debate resumed from 18 October. 140 140 16:42:00 Turnbull, Malcolm, MP 885 Wentworth LP Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister 1 0 Mr TURNBULL —I present the explanatory memorandum to the bill, and I move: That this bill be now read a second time. The tragic Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 provided many lessons in how to provide effective and timely assistance to Australians caught up in an emergency. To provide effective assistance, we have to identify those who need help and what help is appropriate. The tsunami, along with other subsequent emergencies and disasters, revealed practical problems for Commonwealth agencies, state and territory governments, private sector organisations and non-government organisations regarding the extent to which personal information can be shared. The Privacy Act 1988 contains provisions which allow disclosure of personal information in terms of emergency and disaster. However, the act contemplates that these provisions will be applied on a case-by-case basis after careful analysis of the particular circumstances. Clearly, in an emergency or disaster, where there may be many thousands of victims requiring urgent assistance, agencies and organisations do not have the luxury of time, or the resources, to consider each case individually. These existing provisions have proven difficult to apply with confidence in situations involving mass casualties and missing persons. This has resulted in some agencies and organisations taking an overly cautious interpretation and has contributed to unnecessary delays in delivering services and added to the trauma experienced by victims and their families. Two recent reports, Getting in on the Act: the review of the private sector provisions of the Privacy Act 1988, produced by the Privacy Commissioner, and The real Big Brother: inquiry into the Privacy Act 1988, produced by the Senate References Legal and Constitutional Committee, have noted the need for clarification of the provisions of the act in times of an emergency. The government acknowledges the work of the Privacy Commissioner and the committee in preparing those reports. We also acknowledge the inquiry and report on the bill by the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs which followed the bill’s introduction in the Senate. The committee made two recommendations for amendments to the original bill, which the government has adopted in the current bill. I turn now to the new part VIA. There needs to be a seamless whole-of-government approach to the exchange of personal information in a disaster. The Privacy Legislation Amendment (Emergencies and Disasters) Bill 2006 inserts a new part into the Privacy Act to establish a clear and certain legal basis for the collection, use and disclosure of personal information about deceased, injured and missing individuals caught up in an emergency or disaster occurring in Australia or overseas. The effect of these amendments is to permit the Australian government, private sector organisations and non-government organisations to collect, use and disclose personal information in the event of an emergency or disaster, despite the possible application of the Privacy Act or of specific secrecy provisions in other Commonwealth legislation. The bill will not apply to state and territory governments and their agencies other than the ACT, but it will allow Australian government agencies and private sector organisations and non-government organisations to disclose personal information to state and territory governments and their agencies. We are hopeful that, where state or territory legislation prevents their agencies from sharing personal information with the Australian government or with private sector or non-government organisations, states and territories might consider corresponding amendments to their legislation. I turn now to the trigger provisions which will trigger the operation of the new part. These new provisions will be triggered when the Prime Minister or the Attorney-General makes a declaration for the purposes of the Privacy Act that an emergency or disaster has occurred in Australia or overseas. An emergency or disaster may only be declared where: at least one Australian citizen has been affected; and the emergency or disaster is such that it is appropriate that certain agencies, organisations and individuals be permitted to exchange personal information more freely than might otherwise be permitted by the Privacy Act. Where the emergency or disaster has occurred outside Australia, the Attorney-General must consult the Minister for Foreign Affairs before making a declaration. The declaration will have effect for a limited time. An emergency declaration does not operate indefinitely. A maximum period of 12 months applies to an emergency declaration. The 12-month cap was included as a result of a recommendation by the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in its report on the bill. The bill does not attempt to define ‘emergency’ or ‘disaster’. The range of emergencies or disasters requiring urgent government response is too vast and too varied to be susceptible to any sensible and comprehensive definition. However, it is envisaged that the Prime Minister or the Attorney-General make the declaration as part of a coordinated, whole-of-government response to an emergency or disaster. The words, in other words, will have their natural and ordinary meaning. The bill will not allow unfettered dealing with personal information outside the existing regulation of the Privacy Act. On the contrary, the bill serves to clarify and enhance what is largely already permissible under the Privacy Act. The bill will allow collection, use or disclosure of personal information only where it will: provide people closely connected to an individual caught up in an emergency or disaster with information about their welfare; help to identify individuals; otherwise contribute to the response to the emergency or disaster; or assist individuals and law enforcement. Under the bill, information can only be collected, used or disclosed for a purpose that directly relates to the Commonwealth’s response to an emergency or disaster, in respect of which an emergency declaration is in force. In this regard, the bill implements a recommendation of the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs that the word ‘directly’ be inserted in the bill. Given the objects of the bill, these amendments, of necessity, modify the operation of the Information Privacy Principles and the National Privacy Principles and relevant secrecy provisions in other Commonwealth legislation. However, recognising the special status of the intelligence agencies and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, secrecy provisions applying to those agencies are excluded from modification under the amendments and will continue to apply unchanged. In addition, there is a regulation-making power to exclude other nominated secrecy provisions from modification under the amendments where a sound policy case is made out to preserve those provisions, even in an emergency situation. In this regard, the government gives an undertaking to include in the regulations made under the bill the secrecy provisions of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which are in the Census and Statistics Act 1905. The bill also modifies the operation of common law duties of confidence, such as that which applies to the banker and client relationship. The amendments will not permit the disclosure of personal information to the media. If there is a need to involve the media to ensure a speedy and effective response to the emergency, then agencies and organisations must do so in accordance with the normal operation of the Privacy Act. To ensure that personal information is not disclosed for unrelated purposes, the bill includes an offence prohibiting the further disclosure of any information received as a result of a declaration of emergency or disaster. This prohibition does not apply to persons closely related to an individual affected by an emergency or disaster, nor does it prohibit disclosure to the individual concerned or where that individual has consented to the disclosure. Naturally, the offence does not apply where the Privacy Act otherwise permits the disclosure. I want to stress that the bill merely enables the collection, use and disclosure of personal information in an emergency or disaster situation. It does not require any agency or organisation to disclose personal information. Agencies and organisations will retain their existing discretion under the Privacy Act not to disclose personal information. The amendments do not displace internal management processes of agencies which regulate the collection, use and disclosure of such information. The amendments follow from extensive consultation with stakeholders, both within government and in the private and charitable sectors. All have agreed that the amendments are necessary to enable an effective response to emergencies or disasters. The bill will place beyond doubt the capacity of the Australian government and others to lawfully exchange personal information in an emergency or disaster situation. It reflects an expectation of the community that the government will respond to emergencies and disasters quickly and effectively. The bill complements the existing core policy of the Privacy Act. The Privacy Act continues to apply in the absence of an emergency declaration; even in its normal operation, the Privacy Act usually allows the disclosure of personal information for legitimate government purposes. The government is confident that the amendments in this bill will assist search, rescue and recovery efforts and the distribution of services to victims and their families without derogating from the proper protection of personal information. I commend the bill to the House. 143 16:52:00 Roxon, Nicola, MP 83K Gellibrand ALP 0 0 Ms ROXON —I rise today to speak on the Privacy Legislation Amendment (Emergencies and Disasters) Bill 2006. Privacy protection is one of the most important issues of our time. Labor considers that society’s need to respond efficiently and effectively to emergencies and disasters must at all times be balanced against the protection of individuals’ personal information. The bill inserts a new part VIA into the Privacy Act to enhance information exchange in an emergency or disaster situation. The new part permits but does not compel the collection, use and disclosure of personal information about deceased, injured and missing individuals involved in an emergency or disaster, whether in Australia or overseas, between Australian government agencies, state and territory authorities, private sector organisations, non-government organisations and others. Part VIA is triggered by a declaration of an emergency by either the Prime Minister or the Attorney-General, in consultation with the Minister for Foreign Affairs for overseas situations, and provides for the use and disclosure of personal information related to the Commonwealth’s response to an emergency or disaster situation. Schedule 2 of the bill makes consequential amendments to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979. The need for these measures to address the practical issues faced by government agencies, the private sector and non-government organisations in times of emergency or in disaster situations was highlighted, sadly, during recent experiences including September 11, the Bali bombings, the 2004 Asian tsunami and the evacuation of Australians recently out of Lebanon. Schedule 3 of the Privacy Act contains provisions in National Privacy Principle 2 which allow for the disclosure of personal information in times of emergency and disaster. The structure of the act is such that it is expected that these provisions will be applied on a case-by-case basis after careful analysis of the circumstances. These recent experiences that we have had, the recent emergencies and disasters, have highlighted the difficulty of applying these provisions with confidence during large-scale emergencies. In its review of the private sector provisions of the Privacy Act, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner considered the issue of balancing the flow of information and privacy considerations during times of large-scale emergencies and noted: The scale and gravity of large scale emergencies have tested the application of the Privacy Act and raised questions as to how privacy protection should operate in such situations. The Privacy Act received criticism in the media after the tsunami disaster for lacking commonsense and for being unable to anticipate and cope with the extent of the tsunami disaster. Evidence to that OPC inquiry and to the Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee’s subsequent inquiry into the Privacy Act 1988 revealed that some government agencies and private sector organisations adopted an overly cautious approach to interpreting the Privacy Act, impeding effective and timely assistance to Australians caught up in these terrible situations. The OPC review considered a number of options for reform, recommending that privacy laws need to take a common-sense approach balancing between the desirability of having a flow of information and protecting an individual’s right to privacy. The Senate committee noted the OPC review and urged the Australian government to implement the OPC’s recommendation as a matter of priority. The committee also suggested that the government ensure that it also addresses any impediments under the Privacy Act, to information sharing between government agencies in such situations. We note that, while the bill addresses the issues raised by both of these reviews, it does not in fact act on the specific recommendations of the OPC as endorsed by the Senate committee. Rather than amend existing provisions and deal with emergencies and disasters through temporary public interest determinations made by the Privacy Commissioner, the bill inserts a new part and framework into the Privacy Act. The bill covers both government agencies and private sector organisations, although the latter are not specified by industry or any other identifier. As recommended by the Senate committee, the bill does address information sharing between agencies in emergency situations. Recent events and the difficulties experienced not only by agencies, organisations and travel related industries but also by Australian families caught up in these tragedies, demonstrate that the amendments to the Privacy Act should not be delayed. Labor understands that the Attorney-General’s Department has consulted extensively with stakeholders in the drafting of this bill and notes that most of the submissions to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs examination of this bill expressed broad support for the proposed amendments. Labor is satisfied that the laws offer greater assurance to both government agencies and private organisations that personal information may be lawfully disclosed and exchanged during times of emergency or disaster either at home or abroad. They will further ensure that assistance and relief to victims and their families is not unduly delayed or complicated by privacy concerns. I will now deal with the specific changes to the bill. Schedule 1 of the bill inserts a new part VIA, as I have indicated, into the Privacy Act of 1988. The new provisions will operate only upon the making of a declaration for the purposes of the Privacy Act that an emergency or disaster has occurred in Australia or overseas. Clause 80J provides for the declaration of an emergency or disaster in Australia by the Prime Minister or the Attorney-General, and there are preconditions for that declaration to be made. They are: that an emergency or disaster has occurred; that the emergency or disaster is of a kind which would make it appropriate that personal information be exchanged; the emergency or disaster is of national significance; and the emergency or disaster has affected at least one or more Australian citizens or permanent residents. Clause 80K provides for the declaration of an emergency or disaster outside Australia by the Prime Minister or the Attorney-General in consultation with the Minister for Foreign Affairs. The preconditions for a declaration under clause 80K are: that an emergency or disaster has occurred outside Australia; the emergency or disaster is of a kind which would make it appropriate that personal information be exchanged; and the emergency or disaster has affected at least one or more Australian citizens or permanent residents. These provisions specify that the emergency or disaster must have occurred. A declaration cannot be made in respect of an imminent event or a warning. The requirement that the foreign affairs minister be consulted in relation to events outside Australia reflects a sensitivity to diplomatic relations with other countries—an approach with which Labor concurs. According to clause 80L, an emergency declaration must be in writing and signed by the person making the declaration and has effect from the time at which it is signed. Clause 80M provides that an emergency declaration cannot be retrospective. It has effect from the time at which it is signed. Clause 80L requires that an emergency declaration must be published as soon as practicable after it has taken effect on the Attorney-General’s departmental website and by notice published in the Gazette. According to clause 80N, as amended in the Senate, a declaration of emergency under clause 80J and clause 80K will cease to have effect no later than the end of 12 months, with the time starting from when the declaration is made, but it may end earlier. This amendment reflected a recommendation of the Senate committee and was supported by Labor in the other place. The making of an emergency declaration under 80J or 80K triggers the operation of the new part VIA. Clause 80R provides that part VIA of the bill has a broad operation and is not limited by any other secrecy provision in a law of the Commonwealth unless the secrecy provision expressly excludes the operation of clause 80R. I note the comments made by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister in relation to some undertakings that have been made in that area. Importantly, clause 80R provides that nothing in the part compels the collection, use or disclosure of personal information. It simply makes it permissible. The decision to disclose personal information will remain at the discretion of individual agencies or organisations. Clause 80H defines the meaning of permitted purpose as a purpose that has some temporal, physical or other connection to action taken by the Commonwealth in response to an emergency or disaster in respect of which an emergency declaration under this bill—or the act, as it will be—is in force. The section provides examples without limitation of the types of situations in which the collection, use and disclosure of personal information may be authorised. They include the identification of individuals involved in assisting them to obtain necessary services, coordination or management of the response to the emergency or disaster, including law enforcement, and ensuring people who are responsible for individuals who are or may be involved in the emergency or disaster are kept appropriately informed. Clause 80H was the subject of amendment in the Senate limiting the permitted purpose to a purpose that directly relates to the Commonwealth’s response to an emergency or disaster. This was recommended by the Senate committee and supported by Labor in the Senate. Clearly, with respect to the sorts of issues that we are talking about, all of us unfortunately have seen them in recent times. I know many members of parliament were involved when constituents or their family members were caught up in some of these terrible disasters. Certainly, a fair share of us around this House know the frustrations that people have suffered from when information has not been able to be made available to them. Hopefully, this bill will deal with a number of those problems. It is important to note that the words ‘emergency’ and ‘disaster’ are not defined in the bill, as it was intended by the government to maintain absolute flexibility as to the types of events this may involve. Labor notes that the Senate committee’s view was that defining these terms would actually risk excluding unforeseen events which would properly be the subject of a declaration under the bill. We approve of the bill’s intentionally broad drafting, given the desire for it to operate in a range of unforeseeable circumstances. However, it is one of those areas where there is a little warning bell, I guess, in that all of us might worry that this is unnecessarily broad. But given the circumstances it is addressing, we are left with little choice other than to take this sort of approach and support the approach that the government has taken. Clause 80H confirms that the disclosure of relevant information to a person responsible for the individual involved in the emergency or disaster is a permitted purpose under part VIA. According to the explanatory memorandum, this subparagraph addresses the concern that people such as relatives could be denied information regarding the welfare of family members because of concerns about the application of the Privacy Act. This provision takes up the Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s recommendations to enable disclosure of personal information to a person responsible in times of emergency, but it has not extended or clarified the definition of ‘person responsible’. We are concerned that there is no mechanism providing for the number of family members who may come within this definition of ‘person responsible’. It may be preferable in such situations for one person to be a nominated individual rather than for the information to be disclosed numerous times or it may be vital that all family members are able to have access. Clause 80P permits the collection, use or disclosure of personal information relating to an individual if the person, agency or organisation collecting, using or disclosing the information reasonably believes the individual may be involved in the emergency or disaster and the collection, use or disclosure is for a permitted purpose. Clause 80P deals with who government agencies may disclose personal information to. Clause 80P(1)(d) refers to the disclosure of personal information by an organisation or another person. As the parliamentary secretary noted, clause 80P(1)(e) makes it clear that disclosure to the media or a media organisation is not permitted under part VIA. The bill ensures that an entity is not liable for contravening a secrecy provision by using or disclosing personal information where it is authorised to do so under the bill unless the secrecy provision is a designated secrecy provision. A designated secrecy provision is defined to include secrecy provisions binding the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security and the intelligence agencies, who do not normally have coverage under the Privacy Act. The explanatory memorandum notes that it would not be appropriate to override secrecy provisions in this way, particularly as applying to the intelligence agencies. The bill provides that an entity is not liable for contravening a duty of confidence in respect of disclosing personal information where authorised to do so by clause 80P(1). The department has advised that this most commonly would relate to the common-law duty of confidentiality to which banks are subject. Clauses 80P(4) and 80P(5) provide that an agency or organisation does not breach an information privacy principle, a privacy code or a national privacy principle, respectively, in respect of the collection, use or disclosure of personal information. According to the bill, part VIA is not intended to override agencies’ internal information management processes and assumes that all disclosures will take place in conformity with the usual process for the collection, use and disclosure of information. Clause 80Q creates an offence for unauthorised secondary disclosures. A secondary disclosure occurs when a person to whom personal information has been disclosed under part VIA subsequently then discloses that information. Clause 80Q(1)(c) creates an exception for a person responsible for the individual involved in an emergency or disaster while another provision authorises the secondary disclosure of personal information in prescribed circumstances. When I read it like this, it does make it sound complicated for those who might be listening to the debate, but I think that the intention is right here, to allow disclosure in circumstances where it may be a matter of life or death or it may be a matter of quickly being able to identify who has been involved, in what have been some pretty horrific circumstances, but making sure that that relaxing of the rules does not mean that information can be passed on more broadly to media organisations or others through these secondary disclosures. It is intended, and there are provisions in the bill, that the act is given the widest possible operation consistent with Commonwealth constitutional legislative power. We are a little concerned about clause 80T, which deals with acquisition of property. Apparently, it has been provided on the advice of the department that it is necessary and was put in out of an abundance of caution. But it seems an entirely inappropriate provision in this bill and we cannot understand why it would be here, even out of an abundance of caution. It certainly does not seem likely to cause any damage. Schedule 2 of the bill amends the ASIO Act, and there are consequential amendments which deal with that in terms of material that can be communicated or that comes into the possession of ASIO in the course of performing its function. It enables ASIO to disclose information where an emergency is declared. As I say, these sound like extremely technical provisions. It is a technical bill but it is important, we believe, that some balance is maintained between when our privacy laws recognise the value of sharing information for the benefit of both the individuals who might be involved and the wider community and the privacy considerations that protect an individual’s personal information. We believe it is important that the need for efficient responses to emergency and disaster situations are balanced by laws and systems that protect personal information from misuse, but we do believe that the changes in this bill are necessary. We hope, of course, that we are not in a situation where it is necessary to make a declaration of an emergency or disaster, but it makes sense for us to ensure that our laws enable swift and appropriate action by government and non-government agencies that might be involved if we are in that sorry circumstance again. Labor supports this bill, as we believe that the measures it contains effectively strike that delicate balance that is needed. We hope and trust that we are not in the situation that we need to use these provisions at all, but certainly not in the near future. I commend the bill to the House. 148 17:09:00 Georgiou, Petro, MP HM5 Kooyong LP 1 0 Mr GEORGIOU —The Privacy Legislation Amendment (Emergencies and Disasters) Bill 2006 seeks to amend areas of both the Privacy Act 1988 and the ASIO Act 1979. The object is to facilitate a better network of information sharing between government and non-government agencies involved in emergency response operations both in Australia and abroad. The driving force behind this legislation is the need to respond effectively to disasters. As evidenced by submissions to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, the broader community has welcomed this clarification of the privacy laws in crisis situations. For example, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner concluded: This clarification will assist individuals directly affected by an emergency or disaster and will also assist government agencies and private sector organisations, where appropriate, to collect, use or disclose personal information to assist those individuals directly affected. This will allow the Australian Government to provide an appropriate and timely response to the emergency or disaster. In light of recent large-scale disasters in our own region, a modification to our privacy laws is a necessity. This bill acknowledges the frustrations experienced by disaster relief agencies during recent emergencies such as the 2002 Bali bombing and the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. It establishes a clear legal basis for the sharing of personal information between relevant organisations, and it will result in a more efficient operation of emergency information management. All agencies and organisations will, with confidence in the protection of the law, be able to assist each other in the exchange of personal information about those directly affected by the disaster. Victims and their families will be spared the added distress of having to repeat the same information over and over to different agencies. We will not in the future, hopefully, encounter the situation experienced by the Australian Red Cross during the aftermath of the Bali bombing. The Red Cross, unable to access lists of deceased, injured or missing victims held by other agencies, saw the suffering of those affected by the disaster exacerbated. It is becoming increasingly apparent with recent global events that there is a need to reduce the complexity of current legal arrangements. The Privacy Act 1988 does already allow for the suspension of customary privacy regulations in particular circumstances. Exemptions, however, can only be applied after detailed consideration of the specifics of the situation on a case-by-case basis. Some have argued that this is adequate if the Privacy Act is properly understood; consequently, the sensible use of the current act merely requires a greater awareness of the existing exemptions, which can be achieved by broader education. However, in times of crisis, restricting information sharing to a case-by-case basis is not efficacious. The amendments made by this bill will eliminate any unnecessary ambiguity in the law. Confident of their rights and obligations in emergency situations, organisations will be able to collect, use and disclose information to best serve the needs of victims and their families. Faced with a crisis situation, there will no longer be a lack of clear understanding as to the legalities of sharing information. The bill does not compel disclosure and it will not force agencies to exchange information. It will, however, create an environment where agencies can be confident in sharing and seeking information in the pursuit of effective emergency management without fear of legal penalty. This in turn should ensure that victims and their families receive accurate information about their loved ones without unnecessary delay. The bill before us has been extensively researched. Upon introduction to the Senate it was referred to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs for further analysis and debate. The committee heard from a variety of state and federal government agencies, private sector organisations and non-government organisations. These included the Acting Privacy Commissioner, CrimTrac, the Queensland Police Service and St John Ambulance Australia. Upon the conclusion of the inquiry, the committee put forward two substantive recommendations to the Attorney-General. I would like to commend the work of the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs with regard to this bill. In fact, I think that this committee does a very effective job on other bills that are even more controversial than this one. Its analysis has resulted in both recommendations from the report being accepted and included by the government. The committee first recommended that the wording of subclause 80H(1) be changed to reflect more adequately the highly unusual circumstances in which such a deviation from normal privacy laws could occur. As it originally stood, this clause defined ‘permitted purpose’ as: ... a purpose that relates to the Commonwealth’s response to an emergency or disaster in respect of which an emergency declaration is in force. The committee recommended that the term ‘permitted purpose’ be amended to a purpose that ‘directly relates to the Commonwealth’s response to an emergency or disaster’. The introduction of this amendment into the bill is an important addition as it imposes limits on the circumstances in which the disclosure of personal information can be sought. The purpose must now relate directly to the Commonwealth’s response to the situation. It also establishes that the type of personal information available to be shared is of direct relevance to the emergency response operation at hand. One of the criticisms levelled at the bill was that it went too far. It has been argued that to insert a whole new part into the Privacy Act overemphasises the need for change, focusing on incidents which are relatively uncommon and which thereby allow a departure from our privacy regime which is inappropriate and disproportionate to such limited situations. I believe that the second committee recommendation alleviates this concern. In the committee hearing stage, concerns were raised about the lack of limitation on the duration of an emergency declaration being in effect. In light of this, the committee recommended that an emergency declaration should cease to have effect at the end of a 12-month period. The bill now incorporates this recommendation. If no date is specified for the expiration of the emergency declaration and the declaration has not been revoked, it will automatically expire 12 months after the declaration is made. The acceptance of this recommendation into the bill is a significant amendment. It recognises, having taken account of numerous submissions, that there is a need to impose a time limit on such declarations. Some agencies, however, still expressed concern about the length of time that ordinary privacy requirements could be suspended and could therefore be open to misuse. This was raised in reference to the balancing of access to information and respect for privacy concerns. These concerns were shared by the Senate committee, but the Attorney-General has emphasised that the bill does not displace the usual operations of the Privacy Act. When the Senate’s two recommended changes are placed alongside each other the law is able to have a two-pronged effect. Firstly, the bill allows sufficient time for the processes of victim identification to be largely completed when responding to a major emergency or disaster. Secondly, it ensures that the privacy rights of people not involved in the emergency are protected for the entirety of the emergency declaration. Mr Deputy Speaker, where legislation might impact upon individual rights, even when we speak only about rare and limited situations, we do need to be cautious. We need to be careful that our responses are proportionate and appropriate. Thankfully, emergency and disaster incidents remain relatively uncommon. As such, departures from our normal privacy regimes need to be quite rare. It must be ensured that provisions enacted for the explicit purpose of information sharing in direct relation to a particular and extreme situation are not misused. This means having strict and clear guidelines. It means providing clear legislation about how such personal information is used, as is specified in clause 80P, and for how long the exchange of such personal information is permitted, as specified in clause 80N. It also means having a clear understanding of the purpose for which the release of information has been permitted, as outlined in clause 80H. It is also important that data acquired for particular and extraordinary purposes be destroyed when the disaster has been dealt with, for much of this information will be of a sensitive and delicate nature. In times of uncertainty it is important to institute the necessary means to best serve the interests of a majority of people. It is also important to respect the interests of the individual. It is to be remembered that such emergencies of national significance are rare and that it is only within the context of such isolated events that these steps will be taken. This legislation will allow for the better serving of the interests of Australians in times of dire need, and I commend the bill to the House. 150 17:20:00 Price, Roger, MP QI4 Chifley ALP 0 0 Mr PRICE —I want to make some supporting remarks about the Privacy Legislation Amendment (Emergencies and Disasters) Bill 2006 but also to talk about privacy particularly in respect of the role of members of this House. This bill has a very desirable purpose and was intentionally wide so as to allow its operation in yet unforeseen circumstances. Privacy laws need to strike a balance between the value of sharing information for the benefit of both individuals and society and the privacy considerations that protect an individual’s personal information. It is important that the need for an efficient response to emergency and disaster situations is met, yet there needs to be a balance so as to protect personal information from misuse. These laws offer greater clarity and assurance to both government agencies and private organisations who may be involved in emergency and disaster responses. The bill will ensure that assistance and relief to victims and their families is not unduly delayed or complicated by privacy concerns. Unfortunately, we have had a number of disasters—the Bali bombing and of course the tsunami in January 2005. Those emergencies have been the genesis of the changes. I note that the Office of the Privacy Commissioner undertook a review which highlighted the difficulty faced by airlines in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, when many Australians contacted airlines to find out whether the missing had continued flying after the tsunami hit. Such information, readily available to airlines, if disclosed would normally appear to be a breach of our privacy laws. The review considered a number of options for reform, recommending that a common-sense approach is taken to privacy laws, balancing between the desirability of having a flow of information and protecting individuals’ right to privacy. In large-scale emergencies the consequences of disclosure should be compared to the consequences of nondisclosure. The review noted the potential of identity fraud that may continue during such a time, especially if disclosure is allowed to the media. I think all of us in this parliament, whichever side of politics we are on, support privacy laws; I certainly do. But I must say, going back to Attorney-General Michael Duffy’s time, I have had difficulty in the application of the privacy laws to the role of members of parliament. I believe that people often approach members of parliament after they have exhausted many other avenues. I find it very frustrating when departments of state demand that I as a member of parliament have a clearance, an authorisation from my constituent, to pursue their particular complaint and concern. Starting with the former Labor government with the banking ombudsman, we now have a plethora of ombudsmen who are privately appointed and privately funded, and they do a good job—I am not critical of their role. But, again, I find it offensive when I have been approached by a constituent to pursue their grievances that I may be requested as a member of parliament to seek a clearance from my constituent to act on their behalf. I find this profoundly offensive. I have been cautioned that members of parliament should not see themselves as above the law, and I do not. There are a number of things that hinder me from fully exploiting my frustration. Firstly, this parliament does not have an active ethics committee, as many modern parliaments do. In other words, if a member of parliament were to misuse their office and seek information without acting on behalf of a constituent, there is no ethics committee to refer this matter to. I am told that this has occurred in a state other than my own. I believe that members of parliament cannot put themselves above others. We need to be accountable and not merely through the electoral cycle. I think there are sufficient experienced members of parliament on both sides of this House who would make an ethics committee work sensibly. Secondly, there is the Privileges Committee. Sooner or later I am going to be tempted to place ombudsmen’s requests or department of state requests for authorisation from a constituent of mine to the Privileges Committee. Having said that, I regret to say that the Privileges Committee is the last of the functioning star chambers in the empire—not in the Senate; the Senate has undertaken a great deal of reform. 10000 Bishop, Bronwyn (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. BK Bishop)—I might interrupt the member and remind him that we are discussing a bill dealing with emergencies and disasters. He might like to make a statement connecting his discursion to the bill. QI4 Price, Roger, MP Mr PRICE —I thank the deputy chair and I think it is not an unreasonable intervention, but I am trying to make the point that I am a strong supporter of privacy legislation and of this legislation, but the Privileges Committee has yet to reform itself, even though after many months we are still waiting for a consultant’s report. I believe that the Privileges Committee needs to operate in a transparent and public way so that, if a member of parliament transgresses in relation to privacy laws—whether they be the existing laws or these new emergency powers—a proper, modern privileges committee could operate. But I do say this—and I hope the officials from the Attorney-General’s Department are listening: we need to work together with the Privacy Commissioner, in my view, to ensure that the privacy laws, whether for emergency circumstances such as these or for more normal operations of departments of state, do not hinder members of parliament in their function of representing their constituents. If the Privacy Commissioner has concerns or if the departments of state have concerns that have not been transmitted to the Privacy Commissioner then we need to work through them so that we have a Privacy Act that is flexible and meets the objectives both in a normal situation and in an emergency situation such as this, where the privacy legislation has been found to be counterproductive to the very objectives for which it was set up. I am always going to speak out in this place about the right of members to make representations, without fear or favour, on behalf of their constituents. Whether that means taking on a permanent head or whether that means taking on a privately funded ombudsman, I think members of parliament should be allowed to do it. I do not believe that we have found the right balance. I do not believe that there are the right checks and balances that make members of parliament not above the law but answerable properly for their actions. The lack of a functioning ethics committee of this parliament I think is unfortunate. It means we are behind the times. I again say about the House of Representatives Privileges Committee, which I am a member of, that it is the last of the functioning star chambers of any parliament. It is so far behind the Senate Privileges Committee that it is not funny. For the life of me, I do not understand why it has taken so long to get a consultant’s report that looks at modernising the Privileges Committee. I say to the members on both sides of the chamber in this chamber today: please take a keen interest in reform of the Privileges Committee. It is long overdue. It needs to be done and it needs to be done quickly. We cannot hold ourselves up as being modern, responsible legislators if we are prepared to tolerate this star chamber that has operated for so long. Last but not least, I think it is an absolute outrage that we—that is, the Privileges Committee—have only ever published in the Hansard two responses by members of the public to matters that have been raised in the House or in this chamber. The Senate has, without in any way feeling constrained or diminished, allowed that to happen on many, many occasions. Again, I will just say that I have been a supporter of privacy legislation. I welcome the fact that even the commissioner himself has understood that these principles can work in a counterproductive way, and he is supportive of the legislation that is before the parliament. I support it but I do have form, going back to Attorney-General Michael Duffy, in pointing out the difficulty that members of parliament may suffer when they want to raise matters on behalf of their constituents. 153 17:32:00 Hayes, Chris, MP ECV Werriwa ALP 0 0 Mr HAYES —I would like to make a few brief comments about the Privacy Legislation Amendment (Emergencies and Disasters) Bill 2006. Labor’s view is that the privacy laws need to strike a balance between the value of sharing information for the benefit of individuals and the wider community and the privacy considerations that protect an individual’s personal information. This also has to be balanced with the need to respond rapidly to emergency and disaster situations so that the problem at hand can be dealt with, reducing the threat to property and, more importantly, reducing the threat to lives. The bill before us inserts a new part VIA into the Privacy Act 1988 to permit but not compel information exchange between Australian government agencies, state and territory authorities, private sector organisations, non-government organisations and others in an emergency or a disaster situation, whether in Australia or overseas. Part VIA is triggered by a declaration of an emergency by either the Prime Minister or the Attorney-General, in consultation with the Minister for Foreign Affairs should it be an overseas situation, and provides for the use and disclosure of personal information related to the Commonwealth’s response to an emergency or a disaster. On the face of it, the amendments are aimed at increasing the ease of information sharing. I have to say that that has considerable merit. The Boxing Day tsunami, the Bali bombings and Cyclone Katrina, which hit New Orleans last year, are all disasters or emergency situations that stick in the minds of individuals, but they have also pointed to how quickly the systems that we rely on can break down in an emergency or disaster situation, creating undue delays, poor responses and confusion. Such instances point out the problem that the public and, to some degree, private sector organisations have when it comes to dealing with emergency or disaster situations and how they respond to them. The problem emerges with the chain of command, jurisdictional debates, and in particular situations we find an incompatibility of equipment and plant used in emergency response or emergency relief. All issues at hand, whether it be fire, flood, bombing or whatever, are not being dealt with to the best of anyone’s ability. These are situations that lead to chaos and unfortunately sometimes these situations can lead to loss of lives. That is unfortunately a direct result of a less than efficient response to an emergency or disaster based situation. I note that schedule 3 of the Privacy Act 1988 contains provisions that allow the disclosure of personal information at times of emergency or disaster. I also note that the operation of provisions in schedule 3 requires that the information-sharing provisions be applied on a case-by-case basis. Unfortunately, a case-by-case basis does lead to costly delays and, as a consequence of that, the inevitable response to a delay in an emergency situation is obviously something that is not relished by the community. It was noted that in the review of the Privacy Act 1988 the Office of the Privacy Commissioner said: The scale and gravity of the large-scale emergencies have tested the application of the Privacy Act and raised questions as to how the privacy protection should operate in such situations. The Privacy Act received criticism in the media after the tsunami disaster for lacking commonsense and for being unable to anticipate and cope with the extent of the tsunami disaster. The evidence presented to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner indicates that the agencies and private sector organisations tended to have an overly cautious approach in terms of the provisions of the Privacy Act and that has been seen to impede the timely assistance in those very emergency situations. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade noted that the privacy legislation had restricted its ability to coordinate a whole-of-government response as the legislation impeded its ability to gather personal information held by other government agencies to help in the effort to locate, identify and assist Australian citizens when they are in need of help. Having identified a clear need, at the very least, to improve the operation of the Privacy Act when it comes to the information sharing between public agencies, the private sector and others in the event of an emergency or disaster, it is incumbent on us that we do not overreach in the relaxation of the privacy protections. This is what I think the member for Chifley was drawing the attention of this chamber to a little while back. It would be far easier for us to remove the provisions in an ill-considered way that could result in it being too easy to share personal information and accordingly dilute the protections for individuals based on the argument that we may need the ease of transmission or sharing of that information at some unforeseen point in time in relation to some disaster or emergency event. Australians are right to be concerned about having their private information shared too freely. Personal information and the theft and misuse of personal information, quite frankly, is probably one of the newest forms of crime that we have seen develop in this country. We have already seen the open condemnation by the Australian public of the banks who have decided to move their call centres overseas. In addition to being offended by the loss of Australian jobs—and rightly so—there was deep concern amongst people about the prospect of private information then falling into the wrong hands. Only a couple of weeks ago we heard reports of personal information of Australians being on sale in the back alleys of some cities. As a matter of fact, the report indicated there were bulk discounts for those who wanted to make a large purchase or bulk purchases of that sort of data. That is the sort of thing that does scare the Australian population. I note that, in order to combat this problem and to allow individuals rather than business owners to have the final say on the transfer of personal information, Labor has announced that it will introduce measures to address this when it reaches office next year. This compares to the notable silence of the government in addressing this problem of allaying the concerns of Australian citizens, and particularly Australian families, when it comes to inappropriately gathered information being freely available in the marketplace. So while I support moves to improve the flow of personal information between agencies to overcome needless cumbersome provisions that impede operations in the event of an emergency or disaster, I also recognise that personal information must be protected. The bill that is before us is intentionally drafted in a very broad manner. No-one would reasonably expect that any of us could predict the exact circumstances that we may be faced with in the future when we would be applying the provisions of this bill. Accordingly, as we could not predict that, I think it is only right that this bill is drafted on a very broad basis. However, that should not be an excuse for laziness; it should not be an excuse to allow holes to be created in the laws that protect the personal information of individuals. I will be supporting this bill because I support people being provided with the tools they need to do their job. In the past I have supported provisions to assist information sharing in an attempt to deal with cross-jurisdictional issues that emerge in combating criminal activity, and I apply the same logic here. Those dedicated Australians, professionals and volunteers, who respond to disasters and emergency situations need to be equipped with everything they need to address the problem at hand in a timely and efficient manner. With respect to the bill that is before us, while there are some legitimate concerns about the lack of definitions contained in certain areas and about the broad regulation-making powers that can be extended to whoever the provisions will apply to, it offers greater clarity and assurance to organisations which may be involved in emergency and disaster response. This can only help, not hinder, the activities of our various agencies, both public and private, that have a role in responding to emergencies or disasters, should they occur. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House. 155 17:44:00 Turnbull, Malcolm, MP 885 Wentworth LP Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister 1 0 Mr TURNBULL —in reply—I thank members for their contributions to the debate on the Privacy Legislation Amendment (Emergencies and Disasters) Bill 2006. The bill enhances information exchange between Australian government agencies, state and territory authorities, private sector organisations, non-government organisations and others in an emergency or disaster situation. The bill establishes a clear and certain legal basis for the management of the collection, use and disclosure of personal information about deceased, injured and missing individuals involved in an emergency or disaster, whether it occurs in Australia or overseas. Its provisions will assist search, rescue and recovery efforts and the provision of services to victims and their families, without derogating from the proper protection of personal information. It is important to note that the bill does not compel disclosure of personal information but confirms that disclosure is permitted in particular circumstances. Agencies and organisations will be assisted by these amendments to apply the Privacy Act less restrictively and with greater confidence with regard to the personal information that may be disclosed under the Privacy Act. The bill amends the Privacy Act 1988 and makes a consequential amendment to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979. The bill incorporates the two amendments recommended by the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in its report on the bill published on 12 October 2006. These amendments enhance the bill. The amendments serve to change the definition of ‘permitted purpose’ in the bill so that it is a purpose that directly relates to the Commonwealth’s response to the emergency or disaster in respect of which an emergency declaration is in force, and ensure that an emergency declaration made under the provisions of the bill has a statutory maximum period of 12 months. The bill therefore will assist the government’s response and the community’s response to emergencies and disasters. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Ordered that the bill be reported to the House without amendment. 156 BILLS R2617 Debate resumed from 30 October. 156 156 17:46:00 Turnbull, Malcolm, MP 885 Wentworth LP Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister 1 0 Mr TURNBULL —I present the explanatory memorandum to the bill and I move: That this bill be now read a second time. This bill has two main purposes. Firstly, it gives effect to purported orders made contrary to paragraph 39(2)(d) of the Judiciary Act 1903 by non-judicial officers of state courts of summary jurisdiction, by providing that the rights and liabilities of all persons are the same as if each such order had been an order made by the court in the exercise of its federal jurisdiction. Secondly, it repeals paragraph 39(2)(d) and subsection 68(3) of the Judiciary Act. The effect of paragraph 39(2)(d) is that registrars and other non-judicial officers of state courts of summary jurisdiction do not have jurisdiction to make certain orders in federal matters, such as default orders. A corresponding provision, subsection 68(3) of the Judiciary Act, provides for similar restrictions in relation to the exercise of federal jurisdiction in criminal cases. In December 2005, the government was informed that registrars in the Victorian Magistrates Court had been purporting to exercise federal family law jurisdiction, contrary to the restrictions in paragraph 39(2)(d), by making consent orders in relation to family law matters. Consequently, all state and territory Attorneys-General were contacted to remind them of the restrictions in the Judiciary Act. The government also asked all state Attorneys-General to advise how widespread the practice was of non-judicial officers in state summary courts exercising federal jurisdiction in contravention of paragraph 39(2)(d). While waiting for a response from state and territory Attorneys-General, amendments were introduced in the Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Act 2006 to effectively validate the ineffective family law orders as a matter of urgency. This provided certainty for parties involved in proceedings in which ineffective family law orders had been made. It subsequently became apparent that in some states orders have been made contrary to paragraph 39(2)(d) in relation to taxation and other federal law matters. Parties to proceedings involving ineffective orders have acted on the assumption that the orders were valid and could be relied upon. Consequently, this bill creates new statutory rights and liabilities for parties that may be exercised and enforced in the same manner as valid orders of the relevant court. These provisions will provide certainty for these parties and avoid unnecessary legal challenges. In order to prevent the situation arising again, the bill repeals paragraph 39(2)(d) and subsection 68(3) of the Judiciary Act. This will allow, subject to the Constitution, state summary courts to be constituted in the same way for the purpose of exercising federal jurisdiction as they are able to be constituted for the purpose of exercising state jurisdiction. State summary courts will be able to determine which officers, including non-judicial officers, can exercise federal jurisdiction. This will place state summary courts in the same position as state district, county and supreme courts. Traditionally, stipendiary magistrates and lay magistrates both exercised summary jurisdiction in state courts. Stipendiary magistrates were legally qualified full-time officers, while lay magistrates were not. There was concern then, as there still is, of course, that persons exercising the judicial power of the Commonwealth should be suitably qualified. Paragraph 39(2)(d) and subsection 68(3) were intended to address this concern. However, today state statutes generally require magistrates to be legally qualified and state courts of summary jurisdiction have evolved considerably in the past 100 years. I am confident that the states will ensure that both federal and state jurisdiction are exercised only by suitably qualified people. Subject to the requirements of the Constitution, it is generally not desirable for the states to have to put in place different arrangements for the handling by state courts of matters in federal jurisdiction. This obviously reduces their flexibility to deal with what are no doubt busy workloads. State registrars already make the same kinds of orders in state jurisdiction which the Judiciary Act currently prevents them from making in federal jurisdiction. These amendments will allow the states to determine which officers, including non-judicial officers such as registrars, can exercise federal jurisdiction. By doing so this bill contributes to achieving a more accessible, efficient and flexible civil justice system. I commend this bill. 157 17:52:00 Baird, Bruce, MP MP6 Cook LP 1 0 Mr BAIRD —It is my pleasure to make some additional comments on the Judiciary Legislation Amendment Bill 2006. From what I understand, the bill has two major purposes. The first is to give effect to purported orders made by non-judicial officers of state courts of summary jurisdiction, contrary to paragraph 39(2)(d) of the Judiciary Act, by providing that the rights and liabilities of all persons are the same as if each such order had been an order made by the court in the exercise of its federal jurisdiction. I think most members of the House would agree with these proposals, and it seems entirely sensible that this legislation has been brought forward in the House. I commend the minister and the parliamentary secretary for bringing forward these proposed changes. The effect of paragraph 39(2) is that registrars and other non-judicial officers of state courts of summary jurisdiction do not have jurisdiction to make certain orders in federal matters such as default orders. A corresponding provision, subsection 68(3) of the Judiciary Act, provides for similar restrictions in relation to the exercise of federal jurisdiction in criminal cases. I am sure the parliamentary secretary would agree that this is an entirely appropriate mechanism in order to streamline the activities of the court and in terms of the act as previously proposed. In response to evidence that a large number of family law consent orders were made contrary to paragraph 39(2)(d), the government has added a new part XIVB to the Family Law Act of 1975. Part XIVB provides that the rights and liabilities of all persons are the same as if each such order had been an order made by the court in the exercise of its federal jurisdiction. I think it is appropriate that we do make these changes in line with the Family Law Act, and they are in line with the recommendations made by the parliamentary secretary in this Main Committee. I believe that this is going to be an appropriate piece of legislation which is going to assist considerably in relation to the judiciary in this country. I welcome the member for Fisher, who has arrived in the House. 157 17:55:00 Slipper, Peter, MP 0V5 Fisher LP 1 0 Mr SLIPPER —I thank my friend and colleague the member for Cook. I do not know whether the member for Gellibrand has spoken. DZS Bowen, Chris, MP Mr Bowen —She was detained in the House. 10000 Adams, Dick (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. DGH Adams)—The honourable member for Fisher has the floor. 0V5 Slipper, Peter, MP Mr SLIPPER —Thank you. I am pleased to be able to rise in the Main Committee today to speak on the Judiciary Legislation Amendment Bill 2006. This bill is designed to update legislation pertaining to the duties and responsibilities of magistrates court registrars so as to support them better in their positions and to streamline the operation of these officers. It will provide for the support of the magistrates court in each of the states in their deliberations on federal family law matters and other matters of federal jurisdiction. Unfortunately, some registrars in the magistrates courts have been unintentionally sidestepping some of the requirements of the Judiciary Act 1903 by making consent orders in family law matters, which is in fact exercising federal family law jurisdiction. In paragraph 39(2)(d) of the act it is clear that matters of federal jurisdiction that are allowed to be dealt with in state courts can only be judicially exercised by a magistrate in those courts. Legislative changes were made earlier this year through the Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Bill 2006 which ensured that the rights and responsibilities of parties affected by these Family Court consent orders were the same as if those orders had been issued by the magistrate, as was initially required. This sufficiently addressed the issue of the family law matters; however, there remained the prospect that other matters of federal jurisdiction that were able to be dealt with by a state court may have been subject to the same predicament. Initial inquiries suggested that there had been no examples of such situations. However, as is often the case, further investigation revealed that similar dilemmas had been purported to have resulted through orders made in relation to taxation matters and other matters which are of federal jurisdiction. This bill, the Judiciary Legislation Amendment Bill 2006, addresses those issues. It is pertinent to note that registrars already have the power under their relevant state legislation to make orders of this kind on state matters. The changes proposed in this bill will remove the barriers to the registrars by repealing section 39(2)(d). It will also repeal section 68(3) of the act, which had a similar effect on the making of orders relating to criminal law matters of federal jurisdiction, although there are no known situations where an order was made by a registrar in contravention of section 68(3). It is important that this bill is passed to put in place safeguards against the possibility of legal challenges to such orders. It is arguable that these overriding issues have in part arisen due to the relatively young age of the Federal Magistrates Court, which was established in 1999 to help ease the significant case load of the Federal Court and the Family Court. It is not unheard of to identify anomalies from time to time in our legislation which are able to be addressed and corrected. It is only through the use of legislation that such issues can be identified and addressed. It has been the case that spelling and punctuation errors, typos and wrong numbers have at times been identified and able to be corrected. I suppose it is irritating that this has to occur but, human error being what it is, these are matters which will occasionally have to be addressed. Deputy registrars and registrars have considerable responsibility to ensure our court systems operate as smoothly and effectively as possible. Their duties include coordinating court-sitting lists, providing advice to those using the courts and to the general public, ensuring court records are kept up to date, keeping the books for money paid to the court and ensuring that it is distributed as required, and preparing and issuing court processes in the civil court, the family law court and the relevant criminal jurisdictions. It is important that the legislation supports the carrying out of this role. The bill also enables each of our states to determine themselves which classification of court officer can exercise federal jurisdiction and in what specific circumstances they are able to do just that. The provisions of this bill help to both correct and clarify the situation with regard to state officers exercising matters of federal jurisdiction. Happily it is a non-controversial bill, as many bills that pass through the parliament are. It has the support of both sides of the House and that is a good thing. I am very happy to commend this bill to the chamber. 159 18:00:00 Bowen, Chris, MP DZS Prospect ALP 0 0 Mr BOWEN —My contribution will be in a similar vein to that of the honourable member for Cook. I know the honourable member for Gellibrand wishes to contribute but there is a debate going on in the main chamber, where she has been detained. I understand there will be a division shortly. Until that occurs, she is detained in the main chamber. The Judiciary Legislation Amendment Bill 2006 has two main purposes. The first is to give effect to the purported orders made by non-judicial officers of state courts of summary jurisdiction contrary to paragraph 39(2)(d) of the Judiciary Act 1903 by providing that the rights and liabilities of all persons are the same as if each such order had been an order made by the court in the exercise of federal jurisdiction. The effect of paragraph 39(2)(d) is that registrars and other non-judicial officers of state courts of summary jurisdiction do not have the jurisdiction to make certain orders in federal matters such as default orders. A corresponding provision, section 68(3) of the Judiciary Act, provides for similar restrictions in relation to the exercise of federal jurisdiction in criminal cases. In response to the evidence that a large number of family law consent orders were made contrary to paragraph 39(2)(d), the government added part XIVB to the Family Law Act. A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 6.03 pm to 6.15 pm 159 18:15:00 Roxon, Nicola, MP 83K Gellibrand ALP 0 0 Ms ROXON —I rise today to speak on the Judiciary Legislation Amendment Bill 2006. I thank the Main Committee for its indulgence, due to the difficulties that have been experienced with multiple bills being debated in other places today. The need for this bill arises from the government’s discovery late in 2005 that a large number of family law consent orders were being made by registrars in the Victorian Magistrates Court contrary to the restrictions contained in section 39(2)(d) of the Judiciary Act. Following this revelation, the government introduced amendments in the Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Bill 2006 to ensure that the ineffective family law orders that had been made could be effectively validated. Subsequently, the government learnt that there were actually a number of other orders—for example, in relation to tax matters and other federal law matters—that had also been made by other state courts contrary to section 39(2)(d). Accordingly we are now here with this bill, which aims to rectify the problem. Clearly, the parties who have been affected by this jurisdictional bungle need to be provided with certainty as quickly as possible. As far as those parties are concerned, they have presented to court and had their matter dealt with and would imagine that everything is completely in order. This bill has three aims. Firstly, it seeks to give effect to those orders that have been made contrary to section 39(2)(d) of the Judiciary Act by non-judicial officers of state courts of summary jurisdiction by providing that the rights and liabilities of all persons are the same as if such order had been an order made by the court in the exercise of its federal jurisdiction. Secondly, the bill seeks to create new statutory rights and liabilities for parties so that these new rights may be exercised and enforced in the same manner as valid orders of the relevant court. In this respect, the bill aims to provide certainty for the parties and avoid unnecessary legal challenges. Thirdly, the bill repeals section 39(2)(d) and section 68(3) of the Judiciary Act in order to prevent this situation arising again in the future. Given that we have been here twice already now dealing with these matters, that does seem to be a sensible precaution. Let me deal firstly with some of the background to these amendments. Under section 76 of the Constitution, the parliament may make laws conferring original jurisdiction on the High Court in any matter arising under any laws made by the parliament. Under section 77 of the Constitution, the Commonwealth parliament may invest any state court with federal jurisdiction with respect to any of the matters mentioned in sections 75 and 76 of the Constitution. The Judiciary Act of 1903 regulates the structure of the Australian judicial system. Federal jurisdiction is conferred on state courts in general terms by section 39 of the Judiciary Act. Section 39(2) of the Judiciary Act vests state courts with jurisdiction over the full range of matters enumerated in sections 75 and 76 of the Constitution, except those made exclusive to the High Court. Section 39(2) imposes three conditions or restrictions on the exercise of federal jurisdiction by state courts. One of these current conditions states that when a state court exercises federal jurisdiction summarily, the jurisdiction must be exercised by a person falling within one of three classes: firstly, a stipendiary police or special magistrate; secondly, a state magistrate specially authorised by the Governor-General to exercise such jurisdiction; or, thirdly, an arbitrator on whom jurisdiction is conferred by state law. In other words, registrars and other non-judicial officers of state courts of summary jurisdiction do not have jurisdiction to make certain orders in federal matters. Drafted in 1903, the presumed goal of the section was to ensure that federal jurisdiction was exercised only by suitably qualified persons, reflecting a concern that some lay magistrates might not be suitable to exercise federal jurisdiction by reason of their lack of formal legal qualifications, experience or expertise. As I will note later, this situation has now, of course, changed dramatically. Section 68 of the Judiciary Act provides state and territory courts with jurisdiction to handle criminal cases arising under Commonwealth law. But the section does limit the range of state and territory courts which have jurisdiction over committals and summary convictions to a judge, stipendiary police or special magistrate, or some magistrate of the state or territory specially authorised by the Governor-General to exercise such jurisdiction. In summary, section 68 provides similar restrictions to section 39 in relation to the exercise of federal jurisdiction but in criminal rather than civil matters. Despite these restrictions being in the Judiciary Act, parties to the relevant proceedings have legitimately acted on the assumption that the orders they have received in state courts were valid and could be relied upon. These parties need to be provided with certainty as quickly as possible. The bill seeks to do that and to rectify the irregularities in those cases and change the Judiciary Act to prevent the problem in the future. I will now turn in some detail to the provisions of the bill. As I have said, the bill amends the Judiciary Act in the ways that I have set out and schedule 1 is designed to fix this problem for the future. The explanatory memorandum actually makes clear that: This will place State summary courts in the same position as State district, county and supreme courts, enabling States to determine, subject to constitutional requirements, which class of officer may exercise federal jurisdiction and in what circumstances. Obviously that will help with the resolution of a number of matters and make sure that those orders that have already been made cannot be made in the future inappropriately. I am not going to go through a number of the other parts of this bill because I think that the other speakers have already dealt with them. However, I do want to flag that schedule 1 part 2 creates the legislative framework for validating past orders. It is important to give those parties that I have mentioned who have unwittingly used this procedure certainty and consistency. It would not be in anybody’s interests, theirs or the community’s, to require that all these matters be relitigated. This part is, though, extremely technical, because the transfer and transitional arrangements must be meticulously dealt with to ensure that all parties are properly protected. There is a concern about a number of the processes that have been taken. I am just looking to see whether it is necessary to go through the particular provisions of the way that these orders are going to be made effective. I think it is sufficient to note that the part deals with it and that the provisions are extremely detailed. It is important that, if a person is relying on an order that has been made by one of these courts or if there is an enforcement issue relating to an order, those orders can be enforced in the proper way. So an unusual process does have to be adopted to do this and we are assured by the Attorney’s office and the department that there are no constitutional or other problems with taking this course of action. Labor also understands that the state governments have been extensively consulted and are agreeable to the changes that are proposed in the bill, considering it an opportunity to better control the allocation of workloads within their jurisdictions. While Labor acknowledges that state courts are adequately equipped with appropriately-trained staff to exercise federal jurisdiction in the manner intended by the bill at this time, we do remain concerned about the future ramifications of these changes. We hope that the department intends to monitor these changes, keeping a closer eye on the operations of the courts than it evidently has done in the recent past. Of course there are jurisdictional issues, but the federal department does have an interest in the operation of state courts to some extent, given that they are exercising so much federal jurisdiction these days. We have been assured by the department that there are no unforeseen constitutional issues arising from this bill. We do nevertheless have some apprehension about the approach taken to validate past orders. We hope that the government’s advice is right; otherwise, inevitably, it will be challenged in the future either by an affected party or by someone who no longer wishes to be bound by some of these orders. Further, we do note that the state courts exercising federal jurisdiction are still subject to constitutional requirements—those of chapter 3 and others. We note that the state courts will need to manage this change carefully to ensure that both federal and state jurisdiction is exercised only by suitably qualified officers. Again, we hope that the department’s advice is right on this and that, as I have already said, the department will appropriately monitor developments in this regard. The government, however, claims that these changes will contribute to a more accessible, efficient and flexible civil justice system—which does seem a somewhat gross overstatement of what this bill is going to deliver. It is a tidying-up bill if nothing else. It does of course, by making changes to the Judiciary Act to ensure that these problems cannot arise in the future, provide some flexibility—although that is really quite small in the scheme of things. A more accessible, efficient and flexible civil justice system is not going to be delivered, however, from this bill. It will only come about with a detailed forward plan for our federal courts, with adequate resources being provided, with reform systems for judicial appointments and complaints, and with a real commitment to timely resolution of legal matters and a proper resourcing of legal support either through community legal centres or legal aid. Unfortunately, the government shows no interest in any of these matters—all ones which could contribute much more to an accessible, efficient and flexible civil justice system. I have also spoken before of the need for a plan for our courts that goes beyond one electoral cycle. The Attorney-General does not appear to have any plan for the federal judiciary, no map for how our federal courts should interact between themselves or with state courts, no strategy for the judges and no concern for the prompt resolution of federal legal matters—and, I hasten to say, no strategy for the number of judges rather than for any decisions that they might take. The problem arising in this instance is merely a reflection of this government’s general neglect of the judiciary, the vital third arm of our democracy. Other than the question of judicial pensions, I note that no parliamentary committee has considered any issue affecting the judiciary in the life of this government. I believe it is now time for a joint select committee into the judiciary to be established to consider a range of structural matters affecting the federal judiciary in a thorough and proper way. It could help air a range of issues, including the difficult ones like the appointment of judges, complaints processes, and complaints against judges and processes for handling those. It could set up an appropriate mechanism for dialogue between the parliament, the courts, the profession and, importantly, the broader community. It seems to me that these sorts of activities would do much more to deliver—as the government claims that these changes in this rather modest bill do—and contribute to an accessible, efficient and flexible justice system than the tidying-up bill that we are passing here today. Notwithstanding a few of the moderate concerns that we have, particularly in relation to some constitutional implications of this bill, Labor recognise the need to provide certainty to the parties who have unwittingly been caught up in this exercise of inappropriate jurisdiction. They need to be dealt with promptly. Accordingly, we support the bill and the government’s efforts to try to ensure that all of the technical transitional provisions are appropriately included in the bill. I commend it to the House. 162 18:27:00 Turnbull, Malcolm, MP 885 Wentworth LP Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister 1 0 Mr TURNBULL —in reply—I thank the members who have contributed to this debate on the Judiciary Legislation Amendment Bill 2006: the member for Cook, the member for Prospect, the member for Fisher and, just a moment ago, the member for Gellibrand. In response to a few points the member for Gellibrand raised, she raised some concerns about whether the ex post facto or retrospective validation of purported orders made by non-judicial officers of state courts would be constitutionally valid. I was gratified to hear of her concern, but characteristically she did not provide any suggestions as to how her concern could be dealt with. She provided no amendments, and no solutions were offered at all. 83K Roxon, Nicola, MP Ms Roxon —Uncharacteristically, you mean. 885 Turnbull, Malcolm, MP Mr TURNBULL —I said ‘characteristically’; you said ‘uncharacteristically’. I said characteristically and that is exactly what I meant. I thank her for her concerns, but I remind the honourable member that in legal drafting, as in most areas, it is better to be part of the solution rather than just raising the problem. This bill will give effect to purported orders made contrary to paragraph 39(2)(d) of the Judiciary Act 1903 by non-judicial officers of state courts of summary jurisdiction. In light of the comments of the member for Gellibrand, I am puzzled why these actions by non-judicial officers of state courts are evidence of some neglect by the Commonwealth of the federal judiciary. Again, that was another gap in the honourable member’s remarks today. This bill will provide that the rights and liabilities of all persons are the same as if each such order made by a non-judicial officer of state courts of summary jurisdiction had been an order made by the court in the exercise of its federal jurisdiction. It also repeals paragraph 39(2)(d) and subsection 68(3) of the Judiciary Act in order to place state courts of summary jurisdiction in the same position as state, district, county and supreme courts, enabling states to determine, subject to constitutional requirements, which class of officer may exercise federal jurisdiction and in what circumstances. The bill will allow states to determine which officers, including non-judicial officers, can exercise federal jurisdiction. Consequently, it will no longer be necessary for states to have in place different arrangements for handling matters in federal jurisdiction. By doing so, this bill contributes to achieving a more accessible, efficient and flexible civil justice system. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment. 163 BILLS R2625 Debate resumed from 30 October. 163 163 18:32:00 Dutton, Peter, MP 00AKI Dickson LP Minister for Revenue and Assistant Treasurer 1 0 Mr DUTTON —I present the explanatory memorandum to the Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Trans-Tasman Banking Supervision) Bill 2006, and I move: That this bill be now read a second time. The government is committed to building on the CER (Closer Economic Relations) agreement between Australia and New Zealand to develop a single economic market based on common regulatory frameworks. This bill represents a significant step towards this commitment in the area of banking supervision. The Australian and New Zealand banking markets are among the most highly integrated in the world. Australian banks have a combined market share of more than 85 per cent of the New Zealand banking market, and New Zealand assets comprise around 15 per cent of Australian banks’ total assets. Moreover, the same four banks are the major banks in both countries. Given the high level of commercial integration, there is benefit in moving towards seamless regulation of banks to minimise compliance costs and promote efficiency. It is also important that the banking supervisors are able to more closely cooperate with respect to promoting financial system stability in each country given the interdependence of both financial systems. In 2005, the Trans-Tasman Council on Banking Supervision was established by the Treasurer and the New Zealand Minister of Finance. The council is to promote a joint approach to trans-Tasman banking supervision that delivers a seamless regulatory environment for banking services as the first step towards a single economic market in banking. Both the Australian and New Zealand governments agreed to implement legislative changes recommended by the council. They did this to ensure that the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) can support each other in meeting their statutory responsibilities. This bill implements the council’s recommendations. It also contains some small complementary proposals relating to secondments and financial system stability, to ensure that the council’s recommendations work effectively. New Zealand is progressing reciprocal legislative amendments through its parliament. In Australia, the amendments will require APRA to do a number of things. First, APRA will be obliged to support the RBNZ in performing its statutory responsibilities relating to prudential regulation and financial system stability. Second, APRA must consider the implications of its actions for financial system stability in New Zealand. And, lastly, APRA must consult the RBNZ on these matters. An administrator or statutory manager—which may be appointed by APRA to a bank in severe financial distress—is also required to consider the implications of a proposed action on financial system stability in New Zealand. In addition, the bill includes specific amendments aimed at ameliorating the risk that APRA could be required to interfere with the provision of outsourced services from an APRA regulated entity to a New Zealand bank. As a result of these amendments, banks should be allowed greater flexibility with respect to the trans-Tasman location of their systems and functions than can be afforded under the current regulatory regimes of both countries. Importantly, this can be achieved without compromising the ability of regulators to meet their existing statutory objectives. This will bring compliance cost and efficiency benefits to banks with trans-Tasman operations, which should have flow-on benefits for customers (including depositors) and shareholders. In developing these proposals it was taken into account that Australian banks operate across borders and need to be competitive in an increasingly global financial system. Many large international banks are able to centralise systems and functions to secure cost savings that contribute to their competitiveness. These amendments should create a regulatory environment under which impediments are reduced to banks choosing the location of systems and functions within the trans-Tasman market. To complement these proposals, this bill amends the legislation to clarify that APRA can second staff from the RBNZ. This will contribute to cooperation between APRA and the RBNZ by simplifying the arrangements for such secondments. In addition, this bill clarifies that one of APRA’s objectives is to promote financial system stability in Australia. This has always been one of APRA’s roles, but has not been explicitly noted in legislation. Inserting this objective into legislation now will assist in the implementation of reciprocal legislative amendments in New Zealand legislation. These amendments will also mean that Australia’s legislation is more consistent in the way it refers to financial system stability in Australia and New Zealand. The amendments in this bill promote a joint approach to trans-Tasman banking supervision and a seamless regulatory environment for banking services. This is consistent with the high level of commercial integration of the Australian and New Zealand banking markets and the interdependence of both countries’ financial systems. They enhance the framework for ensuring that trans-Tasman banks and financial systems remain sound while providing benefits to business. The government considers that these proposals are not only imperative in making progress towards the Australia-New Zealand single economic market objective but also path-breaking internationally in the regulation of business with cross-border operations and activities. I commend the bill to the House. 165 18:38:00 Fitzgibbon, Joel, MP 8K6 Hunter ALP 0 0 Mr FITZGIBBON —I rise to speak on the Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Trans-Tasman Banking Supervision) Bill 2006. The Australian and New Zealand banking markets are amongst the most highly integrated in the world. Australian banks have a combined market share of more than 85 per cent of the New Zealand banking market. New Zealand assets comprise around 15 per cent equity in Australian banks. The dominance of the trans-Tasman financial system is very much one way. Foreign ownership remains an issue in New Zealand. As I mentioned, the New Zealand banking industry is more than 85 per cent owned by the Australian big four, but New Zealand banking is 98 per cent foreign owned. Therefore, if a bank is not owned by Australian interests it is most likely to be owned by other foreign interests. Given the high level of commercial integration, there is benefit in moving towards seamless regulation of banks to reduce compliance costs and promote efficiencies. It is also important that the banking supervisors are able to cooperate in promoting financial system stability in each country, given the interdependence of both financial systems. Early in 2004 a working party of Australian and New Zealand officials began discussions to look at options for integrating the banking and finance regulatory regimes in both countries. The New Zealand government published in early 2005 a report entitled Review of the regulation and performance of New Zealand’s major financial institutions. Also in 2005 the Trans-Tasman Council on Banking Supervision was established by the Treasurer and the New Zealand Minister of Finance to promote a joint approach to trans-Tasman banking supervision that delivers a seamless regulatory environment for banking services as the first step towards a single economic market in banking. This bill implements legislative changes recommended by the council to ensure that the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand can support one another. The issue of trans-Tasman financial supervision has received little attention in Australia. However, the issue is quite important in New Zealand for obvious reasons. The big four Australian banks—ANZ, the Commonwealth, the National Australia Bank and Westpac—control 89 per cent of the assets of the New Zealand banking system. By contrast, an inspection of APRA’s statistics reveals no Australian presence of any identifiable New Zealand bank. At 89 per cent of New Zealand’s banking system, the big four Australian banks control more of the New Zealand market than of the Australian market, where they account for around two-thirds of the Australian banking industry. That is if it measured by share of assets. Hence, the regulation of the New Zealand banking system in practice means little more than regulating the subsidiaries and branches of the big four Australian banks. The legislative changes aim to allow banks with operations in Australia and New Zealand greater flexibility with respect to the trans-Tasman jurisdictional location of their systems and functions than can be afforded under the current regulatory regimes of the two countries. This will have compliance costs and efficiency benefits for banks, which would flow on to consumers—at least, that is our hope. Also, promoting economies of both Australia and New Zealand. This bill will amend the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority Act 1998, the Banking Act 1959 and the Financial Sector (Transfers of Business) Act 1999. The bill requires APRA to support the Reserve Bank of New Zealand in performing its statutory responsibilities in New Zealand relating to prudential regulation and financial systems stability. It also requires APRA to consider the implications of its actions on financial systems stability in New Zealand. This is achieved by giving APRA a new objective which is required to be balanced with but not override APRA’s existing domestic objectives. An administrator or statutory manager is also required to consider the implications of a proposed action on financial systems stability in New Zealand. APRA is obliged to consult the Reserve Bank of New Zealand before it or any administrator takes an action that may have a detrimental effect on financial systems stability in New Zealand. As a result of these obligations, the risk that APRA could be required to interfere with the provision of outsourced services from an APRA regulated entity to a New Zealand bank is ameliorated. Therefore, this bill should result in reduced impediments to banks in choosing the location of their systems and functions within the trans-Tasman market. In addition, this bill will clarify that one of APRA’s objectives is to promote financial systems stability in Australia and that APRA can second staff from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. The bill should not have any financial impact for the Commonwealth, because APRA is self-funded through financial sector levies and will not require additional resources to implement these amendments. Reciprocal legislation is currently being progressed through the New Zealand parliament. Delaying the legislation will be of detriment to the good working relationship between our two great nations. The bill implements announced agreements between Australia and New Zealand ministers made on 22 February 2006. Labor supports the bill, and I now move the second reading amendment that has been circulated in my name: That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: “whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House: notes that in both Australia and New Zealand there has been a significant increase in the number of low documentation loans approved in recent years and the role of mortgage brokers in securing these loans; and calls for uniform regulation of mortgage brokers”. Labor is disappointed that negotiations towards uniform legislation at state and territory levels appear to have broken down. There is clearly a need for stronger regulation in this area to protect consumers. I believe my colleague the member for Canberra will raise the significance of these issues when I complete my contribution, but I want to say that obviously, as interest rates rise—contrary to some very firm commitments we got from the government during the last election campaign—families are struggling, particularly in mortgage belts. It is an unfortunate truth that the system has delivered low-doc loans which are potentially beyond the sustainability of those young families. As interest rates rise it is not a surprise to any of us that the chickens will be coming home to roost for many of those families. I think it is most appropriate that that matter be debated in the House this evening as we consider this banking bill. I have spoken to the member for Canberra personally on a number of occasions about this issue. I know she is passionate about it. She represents one of the great mortgage belts of this country—sometimes known as ‘nappy valley’, if I remember correctly—and I am sure she will have a substantial contribution to make on that issue. Labor will be revisiting this issue, and policy announcements will be made in the lead-up to the 2007 election. We see this as a very significant issue, as we see credit issues are, generally speaking, for small business. I have been very disappointed that the Hunter region seems to have become the capital of defaults and I refer here to the failure of large companies to make good their payments to small business and contractors. We have had some very high-profile cases of late, the most interesting of them being that relating to a group of companies known as the Bay group of companies, Bay Building et cetera, which left in its wake after its failure a whole string of small, unsecured creditors who had done their work in good faith. The more recent one is a group of companies that come under the banner of Hightrade which has not collapsed, fortunately, but is not paying its small business contractors. I make a commitment in this place that I will pursue Hightrade on these matters. I do understand that they are a sustainable company and there are no excuses for not paying their unsecured creditors. If they do not lift their game in that regard, they can expect to see me pursuing them in this place, as I have often been keen to do. With that additional point, I just repeat that Labor will support the government’s bill. We think it is a good step forward, but I recommend to the House the second reading amendment that I have moved. 10000 Haase, Barry (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Haase)—Is the amendment seconded? 5K6 Ellis, Annette, MP Ms Annette Ellis —I second the amendment. 10000 DEPUTY SPEAKER, The The DEPUTY SPEAKER —The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Hunter has moved as an amendment that all words after ‘That’ be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The question now is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question. 167 18:47:00 Ellis, Annette, MP 5K6 Canberra ALP 0 0 Ms ANNETTE ELLIS —I rise today to speak on the Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Trans-Tasman Banking Supervision) Bill 2006. This bill implements legislative amendments to promote a joint approach to trans-Tasman banking supervision as a step towards a seamless regulatory environment for banking services in Australia and New Zealand. Labor supports this bill, but I strongly support the amendment moved by my colleague the member for Hunter which: notes that in both Australia and New Zealand there has been a significant increase in the number of low documentation loans approved in recent years and the role of mortgage brokers in securing these loans; and calls for uniform regulation of mortgage brokers”. It is unfortunate that there is a need to move this amendment but I feel compelled to speak about this subject because it affects so many people in my electorate and, in fact, throughout Australia. The Consumer Law Centre of the ACT investigated house repossessions in the ACT Supreme Court between 2002 and 2005. They published their findings in the report entitled They want to take our house. The report found that there was a 39 per cent increase in the number of house repossessions in 2005 from the prior average. Unfortunately, data suggests that there has been an even greater increase in 2006. This dramatic increase in the number of house repossessions is of great concern to me and to those of us on this side of the chamber. People’s lives, peace of mind and happiness are at risk here. The increasing pressures on families with rising interest rates and increasing living costs makes this situation even more difficult. The Consumer Law Centre of the ACT report shows a link between home repossessions and non-bank lenders. For example, of the repossessions between 2002 and 2005, an overwhelming 68 per cent of actions were taken by non-bank lenders. In 2005 this percentage increased to 73 per cent. I have several concerns about the practices of non-bank lenders. Firstly, their customers are often very confused about exactly who is giving them the loan. Earlier this year I had a visit from a constituent who had been to one company for a home loan—in fact, it was a mortgage broker that he had seen—only to discover later that he had taken a loan with a completely different organisation. There may be some who would guffaw or laugh at this and say, ‘Didn’t he know what was going on?’ but his confusion was probably exacerbated by the fact that English was far from his first language and he was obviously not very experienced in the practice of obtaining loans or in business practice generally. I wonder how many other people find themselves confused during this process. Another concern is that most non-bank lenders use ‘no-doc’ or ‘low-doc’ loans. With these loans, the requirements for the lender to verify a borrower’s income are significantly weaker than for banks. The lenders depend on the mortgage broker for correct information about the financial status of the borrower—and, unfortunately, that does not always occur. I am sure many people do not realise that non-bank lenders do not have to meet the same regulations as banks. The Consumer Law Centre report also found that people with loans from non-bank lenders are charged higher fees and that they pay higher interest rates than for loans from banks or credit unions. It is no surprise that people find themselves sliding into debt levels they cannot handle. I should mention that it is not only non-bank lenders that now use these low-doc loans. According to the Reserve Bank of Australia, the share of low-doc lending in the home mortgage market has grown from less than one per cent in 1996 to nine per cent in 2006. The Market Intelligence Strategy Centre predicts that the proportion of low-doc loans in the housing market will grow to 22 per cent by 2008. I find these statistics to be very worrying under the current regime. That is why I strongly support the amendment moved by the member for Hunter which calls for uniform regulation of mortgage brokers. Obviously, this will not resolve all our concerns about house repossessions, but at least it will place the same regulatory obligations on non-bank lenders as those placed on banks and credit unions. The hope is that people will be better informed about the risks when they take out these low-doc loans. This is supported by various organisations which have examined the issues surrounding home repossessions. The Consumer Law Centre of the ACT report recommended: National regulation of mortgage and finance brokers should be introduced as soon as possible. Prudential regulation of non-bank lenders should be a priority for the Commonwealth. Mr David Tennant, Chairperson of the Australian Financial Counselling and Credit Reform Association, recently made the following statement during a keynote presentation in Perth: In the context of the growing problems in the lo doc market, effective regulation of finance brokers is a matter of the most urgent priority. Mr Tennant then went on to describe a nationally publicised case study of a client of the ACT Consumer Law Centre, Mr AJ Biega. Mr Tennant said: AJ Beiga was eighteen years old when he inherited $180,000. He thought buying a house would be a sound investment for the inheritance and secure his future. AJ approached a broker who lined up a $355,000 home loan with a non-bank lender. Remember that this is for an 18-year-old. Mr Tennant continued: The monthly repayments were around $3000. AJ told the broker he was a self employed artist. In fact, he was receiving a Centrelink benefit and according to AJ, had been living on the street for much of his teenage years. Not surprisingly, when the inheritance ran out, AJ could not keep up payments.  The broker helpfully organised a refinance. The federal government’s response to the tragic rising trend of home repossession is that, in a less regulated environment, people should be more conscious of those risks. The government cannot continue to abrogate its responsibility in this area. Therefore, I strongly support the amendment moved by the member for Hunter which calls for uniform regulation of mortgage brokers. In concluding, I would like to highlight that it is absolutely vital that people facing financial pressure with their home loans or other credit seek advice immediately, before they get into any further serious financial trouble. With Christmas coming soon, some people are going to find themselves under additional financial stress. The ACT Consumer Law Centre provides legal assistance and advice to people on low to moderate incomes who are facing financial difficulties in relation to credit and some other areas. I would hope that people within the ACT take advantage of that and contact the ACT Consumer Law Centre and that people in any other part of the country contact a similar, appropriate organisation. But I want to finish by repeating this call. It is all very well for all of us to expect that people should know what they are doing when they walk into a mortgage broker or a financial institution and seek to get a loan granted to them, but we cannot rely on the hope that they know what they are doing. We need some protection. In the case of the mortgage broking industry, as I have said and as I have quoted from some experts, we really need some regulation to make certain that they know what they are doing, that they act according to some rules and that the people who walk in their doors have the protection that I believe we get when we go into banks and credit unions. If it is good enough for them to have those regulations, I cannot understand why it is good enough for the mortgage broking industry not to be treated the same way. I would like to think that the government is in a position to seriously consider the amendments that the member for Hunter has moved. 170 18:56:00 Dutton, Peter, MP 00AKI Dickson LP Minister for Revenue and Assistant Treasurer 1 0 Mr DUTTON —in reply—I start by thanking the member for Hunter and in particular the member for Canberra for their respective contributions to this debate on the Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Trans-Tasman Banking Supervision) Bill 2006. While I accept that the comments from the member for Canberra are sincere, I point out to her that the states and territories are the ones charged with responsibility for regulation in areas such as mortgage broking. If this is not a political stunt by the member for Hunter, he would be well advised to be in contact with the member for Canberra and then ask to get in contact with their Labor colleagues at a state and territory level, because they are the ones charged with regulation on the issues that the member for Canberra has raised. The Australian and New Zealand banking markets are among the most highly integrated in the world. Australian banks have a combined market share of more than 85 per cent of the New Zealand banking market, and New Zealand assets comprise around 15 per cent of Australian bank total assets. This bill is an important step towards creating a seamless regulatory environment for banks with operations in both Australia and New Zealand. It will allow banks greater flexibility in how they structure their businesses. This will bring compliance cost and efficiency benefits, which should flow to consumers. It will also contribute to the competitiveness of Australian banks in an increasingly global financial system. Importantly, the bill will also ensure that the banking supervisors in both countries are able to cooperate in promoting financial system stability in each country. This bill makes important progress to the Australia-New Zealand single economic market objective. It enhances the framework for ensuring that trans-Tasman banks and financial systems remain sound while providing benefits to banks, their customers and the economy more broadly. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House. 10000 Haase, Barry (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Haase)—The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Hunter has moved as an amendment that all words after ‘That’ be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The question now is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question. Question agreed to. Original question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Ordered that the bill be reported to the House without amendment. 171 DOCUMENTS 171 Debate resumed from 27 November, on motion by Mr McGauran: That the House take note of the following document: Report of the Inquiry into Certain Australian Companies in Relation to the UN Oil-for-Food Programme, November 2006. 171 19:00:00 Thomson, Kelvin, MP UK6 Wills ALP 0 0 Mr KELVIN THOMSON —Ever since the Volcker report blew the lid on the AWB scandal, the Howard government has been angling for the verdict ‘AWB guilty, government innocent’. The idea that wheat exports to Iraq and kickbacks to Saddam were AWB’s domain alone is just absurd. We know, for example, that the government’s trade body, Austrade, was involved. Two of its officials met with the 51 per cent owners of Alia—the truckless trucking company—the al-Khawam family. We know that the government’s aid body, AusAID, was involved. Just before the outbreak of war in Iraq, they took over an AWB wheat contract, some 50,000 tonnes of wheat, on board the Pearl of Fujairah. AusAID did not much want to take over the contract; they said it was a bit premature and costly. But the Minister for Trade, Mr Vaile, expressed his displeasure with their view and AWB got their way. AusAID took over the contract lock, stock and barrel—kickbacks included. AWB paid Alia $US2.7 million as a kickback for this contract. We also know that ministers’ offices were alerted to the Tigris deal in communications from the Iraq government. The fact is that the Howard government was involved in these wheat deals up to its eyeballs. Of course, it had formal legal responsibility. Australian domestic law is clear-cut. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Downer, was the decision maker responsible for approving AWB contracts with Iraq. He approved 41 contracts over a five-year period. Under the Customs regulations, he was required to satisfy himself and certify that exports to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq did not breach Australia’s obligations to uphold United Nations sanctions against Iraq. He failed dismally in the performance of his ministerial duties. He failed to respond properly to any of the 35 separate warnings the government received about the nature of AWB’s involvement with Saddam Hussein’s regime. Did the Howard government seek any answers for this monumental incompetence? No. The terms of reference the government gave Commissioner Cole prevented him from making any determinations about whether the Minister for Foreign Affairs had discharged his obligations under Australian and international law. The terms of reference were all about AWB. Let there be no doubt whatsoever about this matter. In March, my colleague the shadow minister for foreign affairs wrote to Commissioner Cole about the terms of reference and received a reply confirming that it did not have terms of reference that enabled it to determine whether ‘a minister has breached obligations imposed upon him by Australian regulation’. Furthermore, the commission said that these matters were significantly different from the commission’s terms of reference. In other words, the commission had no intention of going off on what it saw as a frolic of its own to investigate departments, agencies and ministers. If the government wanted it to do that, it had to alter the terms of reference. To give an indication of how serious and bad this was, I will quote from the Cole report: It is immaterial that the Commonwealth may have had the means or ability to find out that the information was misleading, or that it ought reasonably to have known that the information was misleading. It is also immaterial that the Commonwealth, at the time it conferred the benefit or advantage, suspected but did not know that the information was misleading. In other words, none of these things were material because they were outside the inquiry’s terms of reference. In one Yes, Minister episode, Jim Hacker said, ‘I thought these planning inspectors were supposed to be impartial.’ Bernard Woolley replies: ‘So they are. Railway trains are impartial too. But, if you lay down the lines for them, that is the way they go.’ Notwithstanding the severe limitations on it, the commission made two findings pointing to massive bungling in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Paragraph 30.171 in volume 4 of the report says: The critical fact that emerges is that DFAT did very little in relation to the allegations or other information it received that either specifically related to AWB or related generally to Iraq’s manipulation of the program. And again, at paragraph 30.179 in volume 4: DFAT did not have in place any systems or procedures in relation to how its staff should proceed in response to allegations relating to the breach of sanctions. So the department had no procedures in place to deal with allegations about kickbacks and did very little about them, at a massive price to Australia’s trading reputation and Australia’s wheat farmers. Given this, you would think that ministers from the Prime Minister down would be contrite and apologetic. But no: they are cock-a-hoop. They say we should apologise for having the temerity to raise these matters. They revel in their incompetence. ‘I didn’t have a clue,’ they chorus. Last night Minister Downer said: You don’t know what you don’t know. He is still trying to impersonate Donald Rumsfeld. Has nobody told him that Donald Rumsfeld has gone? The world has moved on, and it is time Minister Downer moved on too. It is like Frodo Baggins marrying Anna Nicole Smith: the job is too big for him. Donald Rumsfeld is gone, but Minister Downer is still there. One day after its release, we must ask the question: did the Cole inquiry get to the bottom of the AWB scandal? And the answer is: no, nothing like it. I mentioned earlier that two Austrade officials, Ramzi Maaytah and John Finnin, met with the al-Khawam family, the 51 per cent owners of Alia, to talk about wheat contracts. Do we know any detail about what they discussed? No. Do we know what they reported back to their minister about these discussions? No. We do not know because the Cole inquiry never called them as witnesses. They should have been called. And now, mysteriously, both these Austrade officials have resigned from Austrade. It will make it pretty much impossible to call them before a Senate committee. But the Cole inquiry says that there is no evidence that Austrade knew anything about these deals. This conclusion is plain wrong. To reach it, the Cole inquiry completely overlooked the evidence of the Austrade meeting, and it also ignored the evidence of Othman al-Absi, the Alia official, that Austrade knew all about its wheat deals. It discounted Mr al-Absi’s evidence concerning the Austrade official Mr Ayyash, but at other stages in the report it uses Mr al-Absi’s evidence, treating it as accurate. The al-Khawam family—the 51 per cent owners of Alia; Saddam Hussein owned the other 49 per cent—have an interesting background. The chairman’s father led a rebellion against the British mandate in Iraq in 1920 and against the British-backed government in 1935. Back then, of course, we were British subjects, but these are the people of the party of Sir Robert Menzies; they are the people who this party was doing business with. Sir Robert would be turning in his grave. The Cole report also fails to deal with other issues. It did not call the AusAID personnel who took over the AWB contract just before the outbreak of war. So we do not know just how the AusAID personnel were greeted when they contacted Alia to arrange delivery of the wheat, as documents before the Cole inquiry said they did. But we can imagine that not since Pauline Hanson’s ‘Please explain’ would there have been such galloping incomprehension as that which Alia would have shown on receiving such inquiries. Alia, after all, delivered kickbacks not wheat. But did the Cole inquiry investigate these matters? No. No AusAID personnel were summoned as witnesses, so we do not know what AusAID found out about these contracts or what the government’s own aid agency reported back to the minister about them. I also note the inquiry’s conclusion that there was no evidence that Norman Davidson-Kelly had any influence over the Howard government. Mr Davidson-Kelly was the mastermind of the Tigris deal, an extraordinary scheme to defraud the UN oil for food program. Yet we know that Mr Davidson-Kelly is a long-term friend of the former Leader of the Government in the Senate Robert Hill, and dined with him regularly over a 10-year period. There certainly is evidence that he could have influenced the Howard government. The Howard government frequently claims that it is the only government around the world taking action in response to the Volcker report. Not true. The Australian’s New York correspondent, David Nason, today reports that people who rorted the oil for food program have been prosecuted or are being prosecuted in a range of countries around the world. In the United States, a New York court found a South Korean businessman guilty of accepting bribes from Saddam Hussein’s regime. He is awaiting sentence and could reportedly serve five to 12 years. A co-conspirator, an Iraqi-American businessman, has also pleaded guilty to offences. Two Texas oilmen have been charged by a federal grand jury in New York with manipulation of the UN program. In Paris, the No. 2 at oil company Total was charged last month with paying illegal commissions to obtain favours for the oil group in Iraq. A former senior Total executive has been charged with similar offences. Both are expected to go on trial next year. In India, the national Enforcement Directorate has asked six people, including India’s former foreign minister, to show cause why they should not be charged over the scandal. 5I4 McMullan, Bob, MP Mr McMullan —He lost his job over it. UK6 Thomson, Kelvin, MP Mr KELVIN THOMSON —Indeed. Investigations by police and prosecutors are also underway in New Zealand and Switzerland. But here in Australia things are moving at a snail’s pace. The Attorney-General, in releasing the Cole report yesterday, was in the business of softening us up and lowering expectations. He said: I would like to add a word of caution. ... it may take time for the independent agencies involved in the task force to thoroughly consider all of the relevant material before commencing any prosecution. This is appropriate. Government agencies should only take actions to investigate and prosecute citizens or companies when they have a proper basis for doing so. Thanks to Commissioner Cole’s inquiry, we now have a basis for making proper, informed decisions about whether persons or companies can and should be prosecuted for possible breaches of Australian law. Reading this, I am concerned that it is the government’s intention and desire to hold back and delay any charges and cases going to court arising from this scandal. Why might the government want such a delay? What motivation could it have? The answer might be found in a report in today’s Age by Richard Baker and Dan Silkstone, which goes as follows: AWB figures implicated in the Iraq wheat scandal have threatened to call Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer as a witness if they face trial, with one vowing “my QC will rip him to shreds”. With the Cole report yesterday recommending 11 former AWB executives be investigated for possible criminal offences but clearing Howard Government ministers and officials, several wheat board figures embroiled in the scandal hit out at the Coalition. “The Government knew ... They knew everything,” said one AWB figure. “It’s like Breaker Morant all over again. If I go to trial, then Downer will be the first witness called, that’s a promise. My QC will rip him to shreds.” The report also says: The threats from the former AWB executives came as the lawyers representing them at the Cole inquiry criticised the conduct of the inquiry, with many claiming it was set up to protect the Government. They certainly got that right. It was set up—and it was a set-up—to protect the government. If the government wants to emerge from this scandal with any shred of integrity, it will not try to hide these cases until after the election. It will deal with them expeditiously. The AWB executives who say that they will call Minister Downer as a witness may be bluffing but, for the sake of this country’s reputation, this matter must be dealt with, and dealt with not by an inquiry with rigged terms of reference but in a court where everyone has the opportunity to put their case. The immediate need is for the Howard government to send a clear signal that public accountability has not gone through some Stargate-like portal and disappeared into outer space. The Prime Minister should accept the resignation of the Minister for Foreign Affairs. That would be the signal. But we need to take action on a number of fronts to improve public accountability and rescue it from the abyss into which it has fallen. We believe that ministers should be required to adhere to a formal code of conduct. We think that question time should be rejuvenated with measures to enhance the independence of the Speaker. We think that ministerial advisers should be accountable to the parliament. We think that freedom of information legislation should be strengthened by abolishing conclusive certificates. We think that corporatisation, outsourcing and commercial confidentiality should not be used as excuses to evade open government and accountability. We think we need more legislation to provide effective protection for public interest disclosures or whistleblowing in the public sector. Finally, we think that job insecurity forced on departmental secretaries and agency heads can lead to politicisation of the Public Service and that we need fixed contracts for a period of five years for these people. We are blessed with a healthy democracy, but it has become flabby and blotchy in recent years. It might not yet need an extreme makeover, but it needs work. If the AWB scandal does not act as a real wake-up call, then our present smugness and complacency about the health of our democracy will cause us to drift even further down the path of those countries where corruption is a way of life and it is not what you know but who. (Time expired) 175 19:15:00 McArthur, Stewart, MP VH4 Corangamite LP 1 0 Mr McARTHUR —I am pleased to contribute to the debate on the report by Commissioner Terence Cole QC into the inquiry into certain Australian companies in relation to the UN oil for food program. I make some brief comments on these matters because of my longstanding interest in statutory marketing, which the honourable members would be aware of. We have had a number of debates about these matters. Commissioner Cole’s report is a very comprehensive analysis of the concerns regarding the conduct of AWB and AWB staff in wheat shipments to Iraq under the UN oil for food program and payments to Iraq contravening the UN sanctions. The Leader of the Opposition and the member leaving the chamber have been left red-faced by the release of the report because they have been arguing for a whole year about the possible contents. There has been much bluff and bluster over the past year by the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow minister for foreign affairs, but the Cole inquiry has found that there was no wrongdoing on the part of the government or any of the ministers. For all the talk of smoking guns, the Labor Party has suffered a misfire in this debate. Instead of spending the past 12 months developing policies and undertaking the real work of opposition, the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow minister have been clutching at straws, chasing the Cole commission, waiting for Cole to deliver the bullets that Labor was waiting to fire at the government. Instead, the Cole report clearly shows there was no wrongdoing on behalf of the government. The only political bullets resulting from this report are the ones fired into the election hopes of the Labor Party, because Labor’s allegations against the government have been demonstrated to be without foundation. I call on the Labor Party to read the Cole inquiry report and to recognise the reality that the government and the ministers have been completely exonerated by the commissioner in the 2,000-page report. In case the Labor Party choose not to read the report, I quote an important element in the report which puts the lie to the Labor Party’s attacks over the past 12 months. In his report, Commissioner Cole stated: There was a lack of openness and frankness in the AWB’s dealings with the Australian government and the United Nations. At no time did the AWB tell the Australian government or United Nations of its true arrangements with Iraq. When inquiries were mounted into its activities, it took all available measures to restrict and minimise disclosure of what occurred. That is in volume 1. Then Commissioner Cole found that the government and the United Nations were deliberately deceived by the AWB over the full nature of its dealings with Iraq. The AWB intentionally and dishonestly concealed information from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and from the United Nations. A commission of inquiry was undertaken by the government and, as many members present would know, the outcomes of commissions of inquiry are never predictable. The outcome of the Costigan royal commission in, I think, about 1982 was unpredictable and the Fraser government—my own side of politics—had a number of problems when the unravelling of that royal commission took place. However, in this case we found that the government was open. They appointed a very respectable commissioner in the Hon. Terence Cole. They have 2,000 pages of documents, letters, emails and detailed information that the commission has put on the public record. Obviously, in the last 24 hours I have not read the report, but I have perused the documents and I am most impressed with the detail, with the forensic evidence that is available and the amount of background information that the commissioner has extracted from witnesses, from those people who were associated with AWB, the departments and other parties. Today in the parliament the Prime Minister made these points very clearly in the debate—that the commission was open and transparent and that the commission was formed with a view to finding the truth and tabling all documents. Like the Prime Minister, I do not accept that the terms of reference were too narrow. Here we have a commission of inquiry and we have the experience of the Costigan commission, the Petrov commission and other commissions. The duty of the commissioner or those running the commission is to find the truth through any avenue they think fit. In my assessment, this is a first-class report. It is tabled in the parliament for everyone to read. I make the observation that fundamental to this whole debate is the fact that the AWB enjoyed a good reputation amongst farmers, amongst those who support the single-desk proposition, amongst people who have argued the case for statutory marketing for the last 30 years. So, whilst there were some allegations in the wheat fields around the farms that maybe the AWB was not doing the right thing, that was not validated, as we know. The AWB did their best to conceal this information. It was the good reputation of those personnel, farmer members and others, that I think did not help anyone who had even the slightest concern that the AWB was not doing the right thing. Commissioner Cole in his report asked why the AWB sought to deceive the Australian government and the United Nations to do whatever was necessary to retain the trade with Iraq. I make the observation that this wheat trade to Iraq was critical to the AWB’s operations. It had been going on for a number of years, it formed a major part of the marketing arm of AWB, it was lucrative and it was longstanding, and I think there was a culture in the AWB to maintain this market at any cost. In answering this question, Commissioner Cole made the following statement—and this is really the key of why I put these remarks on the public record: The answer is a closed culture of superiority and impregnability, of dominance and self-importance. Legislation cannot destroy such a culture or create a satisfactory one. That is the task of the boards and the management of the companies. The starting point is the ethical base. At AWB the Board and management failed to create, instil or maintain a culture of ethical dealing. A government grant, by legislation, of a monopoly power confers on the recipient a great privilege. It carries with it a commensurate obligation. That obligation is to conduct itself in accordance with high ethical standards. The reason such an obligation is imposed is because, by law, persons are denied choice with whom they may deal. That comes from volume 1. It is on this question of monopoly power that I want to make some comments. The AWB has enjoyed these statutory monopoly privileges guaranteed by the Australian parliament so that it is a single-desk exporter. That has been a matter of some debate over previous years and is obviously currently a debate amongst Australian wheat farmers and members of this House. We have a position where the monopoly powers—and I emphasise the point—have been conferred by this parliament by way of statute, and the AWB that was created was a statutory authority of monopoly powers which was privatised in July 1999. As members would know, the Australian Wheat Board and its former entities were created in the 1930s to sell wheat by way of export and by way of monopoly so that, in their view, wheat growers would obtain a better price in the difficult international markets. As members would know, the AWB, when it was privatised in 1999, created two classes of shareholders: class A, who were fundamentally wheat growers, and class B, who were on the stock market. This from the very beginning created an element of conflict between those class B shareholders and those normal wheat-growing members. That debate was pretty fierce at the time and, I think, did create a problem within the Wheat Board management position. So you had a monopoly and you had an attitude that was generated within the management and within the board that the Wheat Board could do no wrong, that they were representing the wheat growers at any cost and that they should maintain their markets at any cost. I would like to draw a parallel with the Australian wool stockpile. This was the subject of a major debate in this parliament. As would be recalled, the Australian wool stockpile peaked at 4.7 million bales in the early 1990s and had a debt of $2.7 billion. They were very huge figures at the time and there was huge debate about the situation. I had some sympathy for Minister Kerin and those in the government at that time because of the pressures that were exerted by woolgrowers. I notice that the shadow minister, the former minister in the former government, is nodding in agreement that there was enormous pressure on government members to maintain the price of 870c. This, again, was a monopoly position. Australian woolgrowers felt that they could dominate the world market—they could seek a price. So we have a similarity between the two situations. In my view, the woolgrowers unfairly influenced the government of the day and forced the minister at that time to raise the price to 870c. As a consequence, the wool reserve price scheme collapsed, there was $2.7 billion worth of debt, and nearly five million bales were locked up in stores all around the country. Some people even advocated burning the wool. That is how bad it got. It took about eight years of quite delicate and difficult sales of that stockpile of wool for the stockpile to be removed. So we have two similar situations. As people would know, I have always been concerned about statutory marketing—and I see you smile, Mr Deputy Speaker Haase. The debate is ongoing because of these conferred privileges both in the case of the Australian wool stockpile and the case of the Australian Wheat Board. I would like to finish my brief remarks by quoting from the prologue of the Cole commission report, which I think summarises this debate. We have had hundreds of hours of discussion and debate about this over the past 12 months, but I think Commissioner Cole summarised it very well in his prologue, and I would just like to quote it for the record. It reads: The consequences of AWB’s actions, however, have been immense. AWB has lost its reputation. The Federal Court has found that a ‘transaction was deliberately and dishonestly structured by AWB so as to misrepresent the true nature and purpose of the trucking fees and to work a trickery on the United Nations’. Shareholders have lost half the value of their investment. Trade with Iraq worth more than $A500 million per annum has been forfeited. Many senior executives have resigned, their positions being untenable. Some entities will not deal with the company. Some wheat farmers do so unwillingly but are, at present, compelled by law to do so. AWB is threatened by law suits both in Australia and overseas. There are potential further restrictions on AWB’s trade overseas. And AWB has cast a shadow over Australia’s reputation in international trade. That shadow has been removed by Australia’s intolerance of inappropriate conduct in trade, demonstrated by the shining bright light of this independent public Inquiry on AWB’s conduct. I think the moral of the story is that any monopoly position—be it in the private market or in statutory marketing set up by this parliament—always has the possibility that arrogant and non-market behaviour will emerge. We have seen it in other areas—for example, in silver mining, where the Hunt brothers thought they could corner the market. We have seen it in the wool industry. We have now seen it in the wheat industry, where there is an attitude of mind that the Australian Wheat Board can dominate the world market by their capacity to sell wheat in a monopoly position and ask all Australian growers to put their wheat through the Wheat Board. This is a great example of the problem of monopoly power, be it by a statute or be it by a group. I hope that, in the long run, these matters will be resolved. I reject the allegations of those opposite that the government—the Prime Minister and ministers—were involved. In the final analysis, the Australian Wheat Board is an independent entity run by independent management, carrying out its duties on behalf of Australian wheat growers as it sees fit. The AWB was not an arm of government. It is very clear that both the former government and this government made it a separate entity with a separate set of arrangements, be it a corporation or a statutory company. I hope the debate will reach some good sense and that governments, farmers and everyone in Australia will learn from this very unsatisfactory and unhelpful set of events. 178 19:29:00 McMullan, Bob, MP 5I4 Fraser ALP 0 0 Mr McMULLAN —I rise more in sorrow than in anger to speak in this debate. As a former minister for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, I have very high regard for many of the officials in that department. They were put in a terrible position as a result of the circumstances that developed. In my role as the Minister for Trade I dealt with the Australian Wheat Board—it was differently constituted then but nevertheless I dealt with the Australian Wheat Board as it then was—and I was aware of the great significance it placed on the wheat trade to Iraq. I want to add to some extent my agreement with some of the remarks made by the member for Corangamite—I have to say not much of them but one part—insofar as I am particularly concerned when the law gives a monopoly in any event but particularly to a privatised monopoly. Any monopoly has serious risks because of the capacity to generate anti-competitive conduct and to distort proper market operations. But when you privatise a monopoly, you create really perverse incentives. It is equally true when you privatise a dominant player in an important market. I would be straying too far to say more than that is one of the reasons why I think the government’s decision to privatise Telstra is such a mistake. But I do want to put on the record my reservations about the continuation of AWB’s monopoly powers. That is a matter for consideration on another occasion and there are many factors to be considered and those reservations may be outweighed by other factors—but I certainly do have some concern. But when I became aware, as I said in opening, of the AWB and the significance it gave to its wheat trade to Iraq in the nineties, I also became aware of the rigour with which the then foreign minister, Gareth Evans, applied the United Nations sanctions, enforced them and imposed them on AWB and on BHP—in BHP’s case, through Tigris, who were endeavouring to get around the sanctions in one way or another. There could have been no doubt in both AWB and BHP that the foreign minister was actively, in detail and in a very forthright manner, requiring them to comply with the UN sanctions. They were not exactly the oil for food sanctions, because it was at a slightly earlier stage in the United Nations relationship with Iraq, but there were UN imposed sanctions with which Australia was required to comply. There were export control regulations which it was the responsibility of the foreign minister to ensure that Australian companies complied with—and Gareth Evans made sure they did. I have seen the files; I have seen the notes. I am aware of the instructions that he gave to both BHP and AWB to make sure that they complied. That is why I think it is such a travesty that people can say the foreign minister has been exonerated. What has been found is that he did not break the law and he was ignorant of what was going on around him. That is no real excuse for a minister. First and foremost, he did not make sure that the responsibilities imposed upon him by the export control regulations were properly carried out. If the government did not have any concern about that, if the government had nothing to hide, why would they not give the commission the power to judge the merits, the competence and the appropriateness of the performance of ministers? But that was explicitly excluded. That was not a matter upon which the commissioner could rule. Why? Because the government knew the answer before they started. At least one minister was lacking—on the basis of his performance before the commission—and I would say two, because the then Minister for Trade’s performance was an embarrassment to all of us as public representatives and, for anyone who had previously been the Minister for Trade, we were almost humiliated to see how incompetent he claimed to be in his defence. But the primary responsibility lies with the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Forty-one contracts were approved despite 35 warnings. Of course, a warning is not a conviction. It does not say to you, ‘This company has done the wrong thing.’ It says, ‘This is a matter you should look at.’ I recall the foreign minister coming into the House of Representatives and saying, ‘I could not investigate this matter without the assistance of the AFP with a warrant because I had no right to seek the documents.’ That is just untrue. Under the export control regulations, when the minister has to give approval he can say, ‘I will not give approval until you show me the documents that prove you are complying with the sanctions.’ That is what the minister is given the power for. It is not because it is a bit of fun to sign documents and we all feel better if we do it. The minister delegated that responsibility anyway, which he was entitled to do. The power exists so that the minister has the capacity to enforce the sanctions. He explicitly had those powers; he totally failed to take action. We have a circumstance where there were allegations, but beyond that there was a cable that came to the minister’s office which raised this allegation. Once again, it was not proof. I would not expect him to take action against the AWB on that allegation, but I expect him to investigate. As far as I can tell, the minister still holds that he did not read that cable. I ask anybody to contemplate whether a cable of that character coming into Gareth Evans’s office would not have been read by him, would not have been subject to a minute from him and would not have had a response from him. Let us assume that it is reasonable for a minister not to be aware of a profoundly important cable from the Australian mission at the UN alleging breach of sanctions by a major Australian company. For some reason, people seem to think it is all right for the minister not to have read that. I think it is an absurd proposition and a failure of great magnitude on his part. But let us assume that it is okay. As I understand it, the report was read by others in his office. Here we face a serious problem of a black hole of accountability in the Australian accountability regime. There is a longstanding principle which I have articulated—in fact, to my embarrassment, I saw it reported in one place as the ‘McMullan principle’—which says: ‘Staff are responsible to ministers. Ministers are responsible to the parliament.’ In the normal course, that is correct, but that means you have to accept responsibility for what your staff do. You cannot say: ‘They’re responsible to me but I do not care what they do; I am not going to tell you what they do. If they make a mistake, it is nobody’s business.’ Then there is a black hole of accountability because they deal with the departments. They give instructions; they receive directions. It was of course classically illustrated in ‘children overboard’, but it is illustrated here as well. There is a big black hole in Australian accountability, and either ministers have to accept responsibility for what their staff do or staff have to be accountable. It cannot be that nobody is accountable. That is what we have at the moment, and therefore the foreign minister had the capacity to investigate and refused to do so. In fact, he got up in the parliament and said he did not have the capacity, when that is just untrue. Secondly, we had the cable to his office and nobody accountable for the failure to act upon it. Then we had a sin of commission. There were two major sins of omission, but the sin of commission was that he nobbled the proposal for a United States investigation because it might have been politically embarrassing, particularly as it was likely to arise just before the Australian election. He nobbled it on the basis of a guarantee that he gave, which he knew at the very least flew in the face of serious allegations and he knew that he had not investigated those allegations. Without investigating these allegations, he gave a guarantee to the United States congress that there was nothing in them—a profound breach of his obligations. I have been in negotiations with the United States government. I have given them guarantees on behalf of Australia that certain things were true, but I made very sure that I had done everything to satisfy myself that the assurance I was giving was accurate. In most cases I sought cabinet approval to give it; sometimes I sought it on the basis of my own investigations. There are two other things I want to refer to. One was covered by the shadow minister, the member for Wills. That is the very interesting reports about the next round of information about this, which is what will emerge from the dock when people are charged with offences arising from this, because people are saying—perhaps incorrectly; we do not know—that they will implicate the foreign minister in their evidence. But one thing we can be sure of is that this government will move heaven and earth to ensure that those cases do not come before the court until after the next election. I will guarantee that now. This government will do everything to prevent those matters coming to court until after the next election. If the government changes, there will be significant capacity to investigate these matters, and I look forward to that being done. But the questions that go unanswered are these: what are ministers responsible for in this government? Of course they are responsible for what they do themselves, and of course they cannot be responsible for everything that every officer of their department does. But who is responsible for the fact, established by the Cole royal commission, that there was a lack of procedures to ensure that the UN sanctions were complied with? The minister cannot be responsible for what every officer writes on every file or every letter that goes out of the department, but you can be responsible for making sure that your legal responsibilities are properly carried out and that there are procedures in place to ensure that it happens. It is the minister’s job to make sure. They cannot do everything themselves, but they must establish a culture of compliance and a proper set of procedures. Who is responsible? Who is going to be accountable for the failure to follow up 35 warnings? Is nobody in this government accountable for that? Is it the fact that people can come to a minister directly, as some did and as others sought to do, and say, ‘I believe this Australian company is in breach of the sanctions’? It was not just airy-fairy comment: the Canadian government raised it with the United States, who raised it with us. The Canadian government raised it in January 2000—and on what bit of information did they do it? Their wheat board had been approached for kickbacks. Their wheat board said no and told their government that the Iraqi government had said to the Canadians, ‘Well, you should do it; the Australians are.’ Did we hold an inquiry then? Not on your nelly! We asked the AWB if it was true and they said no. It is like the congress asking the Watergate burglars whether they had broken into Democrat headquarters. It is as credible an investigation as ringing up Gordon Liddy and saying, ‘Gordon, did you break into Watergate?’ and, on being told no, saying: ‘Well, that’s it; I’ve inquired. No need for any more inquiry’—and Richard Nixon might still be the president. The Australian government did nothing. So in June 2003 what was that other minor agency that raised an allegation? The Coalition Provisional Authority said: ‘All these contracts have a 10 per cent commission. We’re inquiring.’ Did we inquire? No; we asked AWB if they were paying a commission and—shock, horror—they said no. The Cole commission said, ‘Yes, they were.’ It is a terrible thing that AWB were doing it and it is a terrible thing that they lied, and it is proper that they be pursued on that basis. But, in this parliament, the obligation is on the ministers to make sure that proper procedures are in place, that the Australian law is complied with and that ministers act responsibly to discharge their obligation. The Cole royal commission did not find on that because the government would not let it, but this parliament should not rest until it makes sure somebody is accountable for those failures. 181 19:44:00 Bevis, Arch, MP ET4 Brisbane ALP 0 0 Mr BEVIS —I am delighted to follow the member for Canberra. He made an excellent contribution that set out the key issues in this debate. It is a very thoughtful contribution that members of the government would do well to read. He referred to the black hole in accountability that this government hide behind in relation to this matter and indeed a number of others over the course of the last 10 years. I do not regard that as an accident. I think that is a carefully planned construct this government have fostered and have produced as an art form. The report we are discussing is titled Report of the Inquiry into certain Australian companies in relation to the UN Oil-for-Food programme. That title is not by accident. It is an inquiry into, as it says, certain Australian companies. It is not an inquiry into the role and activities of this government, its ministers and their operatives; it is an inquiry into the activities of certain companies. Indeed, from the day it was set up, the Labor Party, amongst many in the community, has raised concerns about the way in which the government put blinkers on this inquiry to prevent it fully examining those involved in authorising and knowingly going along with the most corrupt activity, the most shameful activity, that I think Australia has been involved in. To see $300 million provided as kickbacks to a repressive regime at a time when Australian troops were deployed to enforce those very sanctions and at a time when other Australian troops were being deployed and made ready to invade that country, ultimately to overthrow the regime, and to have operatives of the government involved in that subterfuge is, I think, one of the highest order acts of treachery that can be imagined. It is not an accident that the government have hidden from their responsibility in these things. It has been a well-developed plan of this government to rely upon a doctrine of plausible deniability in which those who have responsibility for actions are able to stand and deny any knowledge of those actions in a plausible manner, notwithstanding the fact that by any fair interpretation of events it is their job to know. Plausible deniability is the sort of thing—and the reference by the member for Canberra reminds me of it—that Richard Nixon sought to hide behind. Not that you could prove a person was necessarily innocent; you just could not prove that they were guilty. There was not sufficient information to join the dots together. We saw that perpetrated by this government in the ‘children overboard’ affair. A similar mechanism was used. You have political appointees of ministers, sitting in ministerial offices, who are not required to appear before Senate committees or other parliamentary processes, but for whom ministers claim to have no responsibility or, indeed, no knowledge of the actions they take or even knowledge of the important critical portfolio matters they are dealing with. That is what we have in this case. I do not believe the defences of this government; I simply do not. I do believe the parliament and the people of Australia have been told the truth. But if you were to believe everything the relevant ministers have had to say about this, then you have to believe that, whilst senior people in their department knew about these problems and raised concerns and discussed it with one another and while senior people in their own personal offices knew about it, they had no knowledge. That is a completely unbelievable set of circumstances to attribute to any competent minister, junior or senior. To attribute it to two of the most senior ministers, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Deputy Prime Minister, who also was Minister for Trade, is mind-boggling. That people in those offices could pretend to have such scant knowledge of so vital a piece of information affecting their portfolio beggars belief. But if that is true then they should resign out of sheer embarrassment because of their publicly acknowledged incompetence. Their confession of ignorance and maladministration should, by itself, cause them to leave office. But that was the important ingredient in affording those senior ministers plausible deniability: ‘We can deny it because there is no proof that we knew.’ Plausible deniability has undermined the entire process of parliamentary accountability. Forget the Westminster model of accountability. Under this government, that was lost years ago. There is now, under the standards set during the course of this Wheat Board scandal, no process of accountability that the Howard government accepts as bearing upon them and their actions. Have a look at the way in which these senior ministers dealt with warning after warning—about 35 separate warnings—that there was a problem. In answer to a series of questions that Labor have been pursuing for months on these matters, the closest we got to an answer—as opposed to a piece of political spin—was that inquiries were made of the AWB officers. The AWB officers denied any wrongdoing and the government accepted the denial. You might be forgiven for accepting that as a process if there were a sole, solitary complaint or if you thought the complaints were vexatious. But when they come from all manner of agencies—from the UN, from the governments of the United States and Canada, and from our own Department of Foreign Affairs and Department of Defence—it is simply not believable that a process like that could be seen as adequate. Of course, the reason that happened was also quite deliberate. The people who were being asked these questions are close confidants of this government. We are talking about people whose political connections are closely intertwined with the National Party in particular—not just the National Party but primarily the National Party. The people who were running this scam in the AWB were the mates of the senior political operatives of this government, including the ministers in this government. I am reminded of a Yes Minister skit where they are talking about a financial scandal in the banking industry. Sir Humphrey said, ‘You simply don’t ask one of the chaps a question like that. If one of the chaps says he’s not doing things, of course you take the chap’s word for it.’ That is what happened here. One of the chaps who was one of the good old National Party cronies asked one of the other chaps, who was also a National Party crony, ‘Have you been breaking the law and sending a few hundred million dollars off to Saddam Hussein?’ And the chap said, ‘No.’ So they said, ‘Fine. We won’t ask any more questions.’ Then when the next complaint came along, they asked the chap again, and he said the same thing. After you have asked this chap 35 times and he has said ‘No, you don’t have to worry’ 35 times, you want to maintain plausible deniability. You do not want a paper trail. You do not want an investigation. You do not want to know what really happened, because by that stage you know it is your head that is in the noose. That was the thought process going on amongst those senior ministers involved in this. They knew their heads were in the noose, and the only way they had of saving their sorry hide was to pretend they knew nothing about it. As long as the chaps could keep the conversation going and the chaps would keep saying, ‘No, we weren’t involved in this sordid corrupt affair,’ then we could all maintain this veneer of plausible deniability. Contrast the abysmal and disgraceful activity of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Minister for Trade, in particular, with what the Australian public servants who were actually in the Middle East and charged with enforcing these sanctions were doing. While the government was happily enabling $300 million to be siphoned off to Saddam Hussein in breach of United Nations sanctions, we had hundreds of soldiers on ships enforcing the blockade. As the Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley, reminded the parliament today: what did we expect of our naval officers when they confronted a vessel on the high seas en route to Iraq at that time? We expected them to ensure that those ships were interdicted and inspected, which they did with great care and professionalism, as our defence forces have a wonderful record of doing. When they went to the commander of the vessel, they did not say, ‘Well, chum, what’s going on? Have you got any contraband’ and then let them through when they said ‘No.’ They stopped the vessels and they searched them, and they made sure that there was no breach of United Nations sanctions. The standard we expect of our military personnel, which they uphold, is to do the job properly, and they did it. They actually enforced the sanctions. What an outrageous breach of faith and decency at every level that, at the same time as our sailors and people in the Navy particularly were doing that work in the Middle East, people at the highest level in government were turning a blind eye and allowing hundreds of millions of dollars of breaches of those very same sanctions. These were mates’ arrangements. They did not need to have documents. In fact, they needed to make sure there were no documents. They did not need to have formal meetings. It was a bit like another comedy skit I am reminded of, a Monty Python skit: ‘Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more.’ It was Eric Idle out there, running the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade: ‘Wink wink, nudge nudge. Don’t tell me. We all know what the game is here. We have been mates for a long time. Wink wink, nudge nudge.’ Nothing needed to be said. Everybody involved knew exactly what the game was. You do not get 35 warnings, you do not get cables from Washington, from Canada, from the United Nations in New York and from your own Defence personnel saying: ‘There is something rotten here. We think you should look at it’, you do not get that sort of information streaming in over the course of about three years and leave it at ‘Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more.’ But that is precisely what this government did at its highest level. Now we are confronted with a report that has done what everybody who followed this in Australia knew would be the case from day one: it has not implicated ministers in criminal activity—because its terms of reference did not allow it. When the shadow minister for foreign affairs, the member for Griffith, Kevin Rudd, wrote to the Cole commission to seek the views of the commissioner on extending the terms of reference, Commissioner Cole made it clear that the terms of reference could not be extended in such a broad way, that that was not his job, that that was a major change in the scope of the inquiry, that his job was to inquire into the matters that had been put before him by the government. That is what he has done, and that is why the report we are talking about is an inquiry into certain Australian companies. Do you know what this nation needs, what the soldiers and the sailors in the Australian Defence Force deserve? What they deserve, what this country needs and what democracy would demand is a full and thorough investigation not of the companies involved in this but of the whole sorry, sordid affair. It is a disgrace to the process of parliament and what we call the Westminster system that this government has been able to construct this veil of secrecy, these misguided terms of reference for a committee of inquiry, this plausible deniability sham that they sit behind. It is a disgrace that they have been able to do that and it is a terrible reflection on this entire parliament and institution. This could not actually happen in the United States, because the executive is divorced from the legislature. It would be hard, even if you had the same party in both places, to get away with this sort of scam in the United States. You could not do it. You certainly could not do it in the United States today when you have a Democrat-controlled Congress and Senate and a Republican presidency, because the parliament would conduct thorough inquiries or would appoint a judicial officer to do the job and make sure that those responsible were held accountable. But this government, after 10 years, has so debased the parliamentary process that everything has become a rubber stamp for the cabinet, for the executive—so much so that people of integrity in the government now find themselves tied into that obnoxious process and, in this case, find themselves having to silently stand by, if not defend, what is one of the most outrageous acts of treachery that this country has seen perpetrated by a government. I look forward to the weeks and months after the next election, when we are in government, and I look forward to a proper inquiry into this. 185 19:59:00 Hayes, Chris, MP ECV Werriwa ALP 0 0 Mr HAYES —Getting to the bottom of the biggest Commonwealth scandal in Australia’s history is no easy task. Getting to the bottom of a government so accustomed to hiding itself from any form of public accountability I have to say, again, is no easy task. Getting to the bottom of a $300 million payment to the corrupt dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein is no easy task. But getting to the bottom of all these things with terms of reference with little or no flexibility is virtually impossible. However, that is precisely the task that this government set Commissioner Terence Cole when they asked him to investigate the involvement of the AWB in the UN oil for food program. It stands to reason that, when your investigation is so restricted as it was, when the playing field is so skewed as it was, when the finding of wrongdoing is all but impossible to achieve, it is hardly surprising that Commissioner Cole could only find the government to be incompetent rather than criminal. Yesterday we heard from the Attorney-General, who said that no other country has undertaken such an open and far-reaching inquiry. Today in a censure motion, the Prime Minister claimed that it was an inquiry that was truly remarkable. It was an inquiry remarkable in its transparency. The only thing that was transparent about this inquiry was the government’s perspective—it was lopsided; it was skewed. It was a one-sided set of terms of reference. Everyone knew that to be the case and that is probably why the Prime Minister has indicated that it was transparent. If it was not an open and far-reaching inquiry, why was it that Commissioner Cole himself, in correspondence to the opposition, indicated there was no capacity for him to find as to the stewardship of these ministers for the responsibilities they had? That was at the outset of this inquiry. Therefore, I think the Prime Minister is probably right to say it was transparent. It was transparent; it was open. Even Commissioner Terence Cole himself acknowledged that he had no capacity to find as to the stewardship of those ministers involved. Why did the government allow this to go through without any examination? I think that is pretty obvious. If there were such certainty in the ranks of the members opposite, particularly amongst those of the frontbench, that they were all innocent, why would they have restricted these terms of reference in the manner that they did? There is one thing that the Australian public does understand when it comes to ministers who set the scope of an inquiry so narrowly as to make it all but impossible to find fault—that is, that there is fault to be found. That is why the terms of reference were so skewed from the outset. The Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Foreign Affairs might think that they have pulled the wool over the eyes of the Australian public on this one by making sure that they could not be found to have been doing anything wrong. But the Australian public can see through those tricks. While members of the government are happy with the result and are happy to be found incompetent rather than criminally negligent, the Australian public realises there is more to this. We know that the Australian public knows that the departments of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Minister for Trade actually approved all those contracts for sale. All the very contracts which were being investigated by the Cole commission were approved by those ministers’ departments. We and the Australian public know that this government received on no less than 35 occasions warnings indicating wrongdoings, suspicions of bribes and the involvement of these ministers. Quite frankly, it is appalling that these ministers have not taken some responsibility for running their own departments. The allegations were being made not only by other countries but also by UN personnel and other organisations—yet everyone has ducked for cover and said, ‘We didn’t know.’ That was the defence from the three wise monkeys. We know, and the Australian public know, that this was wrong. It is inexcusable that $300 million went to Saddam Hussein to fund a conflict that would ultimately wind up as a campaign against Australian troops. The Prime Minister has tried to write down the conclusion of the Cole report in language more satisfactory for his own purposes. He is trying to push the line that Commissioner Cole has completely exonerated the government. If you listen to the Prime Minister, it would appear that there was no wrongdoing by him or his government. Much like the Prime Minister’s claims that he has not broken promises on or given commitments to such things as keeping interest rates low, this characterisation of the Cole findings, quite frankly, bends him so far out of shape that the truth becomes almost impossible or at least unrecognisable. If we accept the Prime Minister’s assertion that none of his ministers were responsible for any wrongdoing then, as a matter of course, we must start to ask some serious questions about their competence. As the Leader of the Opposition said today, this is a shameless government. Its members are here saying with pride and boasting to us, ‘We are not criminally culpable; we are merely incompetent and negligent.’ I think that is a fair summary of what has come out of the Cole report—and also, quite frankly, for the celebrations that took place last night by a number of members on the opposite side. In public life and in public administration, to be found to be incompetent and to be found to be responsible for gross maladministration is nothing to be proud of. Just because you avoid the hangman’s noose by being found to be incompetent should not let you off scot-free. The Prime Minister should be asking some pretty serious questions about the competency of his ministers. I can only hope that he is asking those questions of his ministers and that he is dusting off that little used document that he once had that outlined ministerial responsibility—and that he recognises that those ministers investigated by Cole have been found to be well and truly out of their depth and should be dismissed. That is what ministerial responsibility is all about. As if the finding of incompetence is not enough, unlike in other circumstances this is a time when the price for ministerial incompetence is known. The price on this occasion for ministerial incompetence was $300 million—paid to someone who turned out to be ultimately an enemy of this country. That is right: $300 million was paid in bribes to a country, to a dictator, we were about to go to war with. I know that many members opposite go to great lengths to emulate their great hero, that Liberal Party former great, Prime Minister Menzies, but I doubt whether Pig Iron Bob, even in his heyday, would have kept delivering pig iron to the Japanese for five years after he knew that at some stage he was going to invade them. He never really got around to that, but the point is that not even Pig Iron Bob would have pulled the trick that has been perpetrated on the Australian public in this case. This government is not off the hook. Looking at the editorial headlines of a number of newspapers today, when it comes to the AWB scandal it certainly is not off the hook, and nor should it be. This government has sent public accountability to new depths. This government seems to be proud of the fact that it can get away with simply being criticised as being incompetent rather than being held criminally responsible for the activities associated with these contracts with Saddam Hussein. But, while the government gloats, our reputation as an ethical and responsible trading nation is being eroded. I cannot help but think that those who are witnessing this government’s joy in the findings of the Cole commission are questioning this country’s ongoing commitment to fair international trade. We have already seen—and we should not forget this—that the newly elected Iraqi government actually postponed and cancelled contracts with this country because of the activities of AWB. That was the newly installed government of Iraq. AWB has tarnished Australia’s exports and this government has overseen the process. One of the many things that Australia could pride itself on internationally was the fact that it was always considered to be a responsible trading nation. It did not involve itself in some of the less than savoury activities of other nations simply to procure contracts. However, AWB has ruined that notion for everybody and it has ruined our reputation. One bad organisation has ruined our good reputation—one bad organisation that this government was warned about on 35 occasions and did nothing about. It is difficult to see where the findings contained in the five volumes—the more than 2,000 pages—of the Cole inquiry are likely to take us. It is clear that the government has accepted that the findings are findings of innocence and that there should be no further action taken in this place. As a matter of fact, Mr Deputy Speaker, you will recall that only yesterday you heard the Prime Minister say: I don’t expect it will happen, but Mr Downer and Mr Vaile are owed an apology by Mr Beazley and Mr Rudd. Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous? As the editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald answered today: On the contrary, Prime Minister, it is the Australian people who are owed the apology. Your ministers, who have so signally failed to manage their portfolios, should make it. I think that is a pretty good summary of how the Australian population sees where this government sits at the moment. Members opposite should be hanging their heads. If they are out there celebrating and drinking up about being excused by being exonerated from criminal activity and simply being seen as incompetent, I say that, if that is all they have to celebrate, that is a pretty poor form of government for this country. At the very least, those ministers should be held to account for their incompetence and they should be dismissed. The timing of the Cole commission report has resulted in a collective sigh of relief from these ministers who have been under question. But to simply go into renewed vigour—as the Prime Minister tried to do in the last two days about his government being exonerated—will not wash with the Australian public. The Australian public is already distrustful of this government, no matter what the spin, and that is the way it should be. The Australian public are already distrustful of governments generally. You have to understand why that would be the case. If this is the reaction they see from an elected government—if this is the form of responsibility they take, if this is the form of ministerial accountability that is imposed by a Prime Minister over his ministers—no wonder they become cynical of governments. Quite frankly, there are one or two people in this place who are clearly in the wrong place; they should not be here. The Australian public believes that government should be doing everything they can to ensure that there is proper scrutiny of something as important as the oil for food program, particularly as it has been raised with us by a number of international organisations, particularly as it does amount to bribery—something which we would say is foreign to the way we would normally expect Australian companies to act internationally—and particularly when these contracts were supervised and approved by two ministers of this government. At best, this Prime Minister owes the Australian population the heads of those two ministers for incompetence. If he does not deliver, he taints his whole government. It is a sad fact, when you hear the comments that have been made and see the celebrations that are taking place, that there is only one member on that side of the House who has spoken out about this—just one. That just shows the level of discredit that— (Time expired) 188 20:15:00 O’Connor, Gavan, MP WU5 Corio ALP 0 0 Mr GAVAN O’CONNOR —Tonight there are wheat-farming families sitting around the kitchen table looking at the scarcity of food. They look out on the devastated, drought ravaged landscape of their farms and they shudder in despair about their future. Last night in the bowels of this parliament, a collective sigh of relief came over the coalition as they popped the champagne corks and celebrated the fact that the rorted terms of reference and the subsequent report had exonerated ministers in the government. Let us call this for what it is worth; let us call it for what it is. This is the greatest corporate scandal in Australia’s postwar history and it occurred on the watch of the Howard Liberal and National Party government. This is a Liberal-National Party scandal—no more and no less. And every member of the coalition tonight should put the champagne glasses away and reflect on the enormous damage that they have done to this great industry of this country and what damage they have done to the democratic processes of this parliament and this nation. We are talking about a five-volume report of over 2,600 pages which documents the deepest corruption of the international wheat market we have seen in our lifetimes, under the auspices of the Liberal and National Party government of Australia. There is no escaping this fact, members opposite. It is on your watch that the greatest scandal in Australia’s corporate history has occurred. Every one of you ought to hang your head in shame. Because, as you popped the champagne corks last night in glee that your ministers had got off the hook in your eyes, many wheat-farming families around Australia are starving because of this drought—while members opposite have presided in their incompetence and in their negligence over the worst scandal in Australia’s corporate history. Let us call this report for what it says. This is what Commissioner Cole had to say: It is not my function to make findings of breach of the law. Well, why were they celebrating last night? The government rorted the terms of reference to insulate itself against scrutiny and then, when the commissioner delivered a report within those terms of reference, its members breathed a collective sigh of relief. The commissioner said: It is not my function to make findings of breach of the law; my function is to indicate circumstances where it might be appropriate for authorities to consider whether criminal or civil proceedings should be commenced. I found such circumstances to exist. Five volumes of it he found—five volumes of evidence that shines a light on the worst corporate scandal in Australia’s postwar history, courtesy of the Howard government and of Liberal and National Party members. The commissioner, in the prologue—and if you only read two pages, read those two; it is enough—asks the question: ‘Why did it happen? How is it so?’ His words are a description of this government and the culture that is spawned not only in the political system but throughout corporate Australia, including rural corporate Australia. He has this to say: The answer is a closed culture of superiority and impregnability, of dominance and self-importance. There are no two lines, or one and a quarter lines, that sum up the culture of the Howard government better than the words of Commissioner Cole: ‘The answer is a closed culture of superiority and impregnability’. The Prime Minister and his ministers for years had a firewall set up—as only they know how to do and as only a corrupt government knows how to do—to make sure that there were no paper trails that led to the desk of any minister in the Howard government, including the Prime Minister. There is this terrible sense of impregnability, of dominance and self-importance: ‘We can swan around the rural sector and betray them on Telstra, like we betrayed them on the US FTA on sugar.’ And now there is the ultimate betrayal, in five volumes, of corrupt practice courtesy of the Howard government and its ministers. What has it cost the great wheat industry of Australia, the communities that depend on it and the farm families that make their living proudly in this great industry? The ultimate hypocrisy and the ultimate insult was made on the floor of the House of Representatives when the Prime Minister said about the ethics of this government, in that glib one-liner that says it all, that the wheat growers of Australia have no better friends than the Liberal and National parties. Who needs enemies when you have friends like the coalition? This scandal has cost wheat growers $290 million of their hard-earned income, paid in bribes courtesy of the Howard government and its negligence and incompetence to a dictator in Iraq at a time when the government was spinning out a line to commit Australia in a grave conflict that has now claimed the lives of over 650,000 Iraqi civilians and thousands of American lives—untold suffering spun out by a deceptive Prime Minister who has the ethics of a snake. The ethics of this Prime Minister and his moral depth are about the distance between the rattlesnake’s belly and the ground. 10000 Quick, Harry (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Quick)—Order! I remind the honourable member for Corio to temper his language a little bit. I think he is getting very close to being unparliamentary. WU5 O’Connor, Gavan, MP Mr GAVAN O’CONNOR —Thank you. The anger that I express on this floor tonight is an anger that is out there in regional Australia. If I apologise, I apologise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I apologise to the parliament. But I will never apologise to this government, which has betrayed the wheat growers of Australia. I express this anger on their behalf, because they have placed their trust in the government and it has been broken. But I take your admonition, Mr Deputy Speaker. Let me go through what it has cost AWB wheat grower shareholders of this nation. As we know, when this structure was set up by the coalition—this fatally flawed structure in the wheat industry that has led to this mess—many of those shareholders were the wheat growers of Australia. They have seen their shareholding halved in value. In addition to the $290 million of their income paid directly in bribes, they have now seen the value of their shares in AWB halved. Not only that, but in the most lucrative of markets in the Middle East—and, for this industry, in the world—they have lost $500 million. We are so far over the $1 billion mark it is not funny—lost to the wheat industry of Australia courtesy of the Howard government. AWB is threatened with four lawsuits that I know of, and the conservative estimates say it will be hundreds of millions of dollars and the outside estimates say that, if they are successful, it will be in the region of $1 billion. If that were to occur, the cost of this fiasco at this point in time is some $2 billion. There is potential for further restrictions on AWB’s trade. This scandal has cast a shadow across the great trading reputation of this country. I say this about some members opposite: they have finally stood on their two feet and told it like it is. Members opposite and members on this side know that the member for O’Connor and I have been bitter enemies in the past—him as a minister and me as a shadow minister in another portfolio. You could say from those exchanges that we have not been political friends, but I will say this for the honourable member for O’Connor: he tells it like it is and he is a fierce defender of the wheat growers in his electorate—not like the National Party political Judases who go around the countryside promising to the wheat growers and others that they are going to do this and they are going to do that, and then they lie like a pig in straw to the constituents. 10000 DEPUTY SPEAKER, The The DEPUTY SPEAKER —I remind the honourable member to withdraw that comment. WU5 O’Connor, Gavan, MP Mr GAVAN O’CONNOR —I withdraw that comment. Once again my anger is rising. What a contrast between the attitudes of the member for O’Connor and Senator Bill Heffernan! I have on occasions agreed with Senator Heffernan and I have worked with him to get agendas up in the Senate and to get some scrutiny on ministerial decisions. But what did Senator Heffernan say tonight? He said, ‘Let us all just move on.’ Let us all just forget about the damage to Australia’s trading reputation, the damage to farm families and the damage to Australia’s great wheat industry. Let us all move on from a catastrophe courtesy of the Liberal and National parties. The honourable member for Hume was here. He did not participate in this debate, but I know he is a straight shooter and I know what he thinks of the National Party, and it is not too far removed from the views that have been expressed by the member for O’Connor. In conclusion, what is at stake here? It is the future of democratic practice in this country and the great doctrine of ministerial responsibility under the Westminster system that lies at the core of our parliamentary system. What breathtaking hypocrisy that we should commit Australian blood and Australian lives to a conflict on the basis that we need to engender democratic practice and systems in those countries, and yet we have to suffer what we have seen in the last 24 hours, supposedly in a jewel in democracy’s crown, this great Australian nation. All of us have been betrayed by this government—all of us on all sides of the political fence who believe passionately in the democracy that has made Australia great. The betrayal is felt not just by farm families, and I say to them tonight: we feel your pain and we feel your sense of betrayal, because this Prime Minister and his government have betrayed us as well. They have trashed our trading reputation. Australia’s international political reputation is now at stake. Australia’s wheat industry’s reputation has been compromised, and down on the farm all they can do is look in dismay at the betrayal of the Howard government. 191 20:30:00 Crean, Simon, MP DT4 Hotham ALP 0 0 Mr CREAN —This government stands charged with incompetence. The Cole commission has not cleared it of that charge, because the government would not allow that commission to hear that charge. This is a government, I remind the House, that has a history of lacking in probity. Remember the ministers who had to resign, and the many others that should have resigned, because they did not comply with the Prime Minister’s code of conduct—a code of conduct that was ultimately trashed because the Prime Minister could not stand any more resignations. That is the government’s commitment to probity. This is a government that will go on the international circuit and lecture other countries about the need to get their systems of probity in order, but it does not practise that itself. But this is no ordinary incompetence; this is an incompetence that has cost the nation dearly. It has cost the taxpayer almost $300 million. It has cost the wheat growers $500 million in lost contracts so far. And AWB shareholders have lost half the value of their investments. This is a government that has the gall to lecture people about good economic management. What sort of economic management can achieve that outcome? A management asleep at the wheel, one that thought it did not have to attend to these issues but is costing the nation dearly. The $300 million figure was paid in bribes by the Australian Wheat Board—but, worse, it was paid to a regime the government had committed to toppling. Wheat for weapons—that is what this scandal represents. The Australian government became Saddam Hussein’s best friend. We became the biggest single source of illegal money flowing to that regime—significantly, money paid for weapons used against our troops. This is a government that should hang its head in shame. There can be no greater incompetence than achieving that outcome—incompetence that jeopardised the lives of our brave fighting troops, incompetence that cost the nation in economic terms, incompetence that cost us in credibility terms. How can this government hold its head high? Join the coalition of the willing but fund the enemy. You cannot have a greater incompetence than that. This sits, as the member for Corio has indicated, as one of the greatest scandals ever by a government in the history of this country. Yet what is the government’s position on this? It is little wonder there have been few government members speaking in this debate. Last night they could not appear in any sort of debate or discussion about this because they were popping champagne corks, celebrating the fact that they got off. They believe and they claim that they have been cleared. And, in outrageous further audacity, they then seek an apology from those who have been raising the issues against them. The government claim that they have done no wrong. The fact is that the government on this issue have done nothing right. They are the ones who must apologise to the Australian people and to the Australian farming sector that is suffering huge economic loss against the background of already massive deprivation because of the drought and a failure by the government, through incompetence and negligence, to address one of the most significant causes of that drought: climate change. They must apologise essentially to all of those people who have been impacted, not least our fighting forces in Iraq. The truth is that the government has not been cleared; it has been shielded by the limited terms of reference given by the government to Commissioner Cole. Those terms of reference were limited simply to criminal activity, breaches of the law—primarily by the AWB. The truth is that the AWB scandal is not just about criminal activity—important as that is to establish and to prosecute—but is also about competence, negligence and the role of ministers being held responsible for the actions or inactions of their departments, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has failed big-time. Just look at the report in relation to that department, headed by two ministers that had to appear before the Cole commission. The report had this to say about DFAT: ... DFAT did very little in relation to the allegations or other information it received ... Further on: DFAT did not have in place any systems or procedures in relation to how its staff should proceed in response to allegations relating to the breach of sanctions. That is absolutely damning. This is what the Cole commission found. But where does the buck stop? We are here in a parliament modelled on the Westminster system. The requirement in the Westminster system is that the buck stops with the minister. But these two ministers—God, you would not want any buck stopping with them! I have never seen two more embarrassing performances before any tribunal, let alone this commission. It was only a question of which one of them was worse. For example, the performance of Mark Vaile, then the Minister for Trade and now the Minister for Transport and Regional Services, was the most embarrassing ever seen. I remember it being reported on The 7.30 Report that night. The reporter noted that Mark Vaile said he was not aware that wheat was being sold at inflated prices or that the AWB had agreed to payments whereby money went to the Iraqi regime. ‘I don’t recall,’ he said time and time again. The words also appeared 45 times in his written statement—the written record of it. How could anyone who saw that interview, and the bumbling, embarrassing performance of the minister, have faith that this was a government in charge of its responsibilities and in charge of its department? Minister Downer, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, said he did not read his memos. What are these ministers paid for? He is the person who will always have that little snippet to use against someone else. He reads those memos, but the memos and warnings that advise him that there is something rotten going on in the AWB, he simply says he did not read. Then there was Minister Truss. This was the minister that actually, as Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, had responsibility for ensuring that the Wheat Export Authority enforced its obligations to protect the interests of wheat growers in relation to this fiasco. He failed completely. Then there was the Prime Minister, who sat there and, in that knowing, controlled tone, denied that he ever was told about anything. We have seen this before. We saw it in relation to the ‘kids overboard’. We have seen the classic defence of this Prime Minister so many times: he does not want to know what he should not know. He has conditioned the circumstances in which the information that could prove embarrassing to him is not passed on. There you have it: they all do not know. XS4 Lawrence, Dr Carmen, MP Dr Lawrence interjecting— DT4 Crean, Simon, MP Mr CREAN —As the member for Fremantle says, we do not have just one Sergeant Schultz in this place; we have a clutch of them—the four Sergeant Schultzes of Australian politics in charge not only of the prime ministership but also of trade, foreign affairs and agriculture—damned for their incompetence. That is what this report has found. But here they are, they pursue a war and they condemn Saddam Hussein but they pay him money to arm his troops. I want to go on the record here to contrast how our government operated in relation to these UN sanctions when we were in charge from 1991 through to 1996 after the first Gulf War, through which the sanctions were imposed. I was a member of that government and I had responsibility as minister for primary industries in relation to the very industries that are suffering at the moment—the growers of this country, particularly in relation to wheat. We allowed no such rorting. I say that categorically. Gareth Evans, the then foreign minister, insisted on his department satisfying itself that the sanctions were not breached by Australian companies. In other words, we insisted as responsible ministers and a responsible cabinet that there would be no bribes paid. But not only that: we knew there was going to be a hit to the wheat growers. We saw that it was our responsibility not just to ensure that the sanctions were imposed but that the interests of the wheat growers were protected as well. As minister for primary industries, I announced ex gratia payments to grain growers so that they would not suffer. So we protected the integrity of the UN sanctions but we also ensured that grower interests were protected as well. That is what is called taking responsibility. That is what a minister should do. But not this crowd. This clutch of ministers was warned many times—Cole has established 35 times they were told that they should investigate this matter. So not only were they not proactive in ensuring the sanctions regime was not breached; they failed to act when they were warned. A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 8.42 pm to 8.59 pm DT4 Crean, Simon, MP Mr CREAN —It is true that the government has been found to have done nothing criminal. But the commission was not allowed to test whether they have been negligent. Any more open an inquiry would have found on the evidence that the charges of negligence and maladministration were found. The terms of reference were restricted to criminal activity. Our shadow minister wrote to the Cole commission of inquiry in March asking it to ‘determine whether Australia has breached its international obligations or whether a minister has breached obligations imposed upon him by Australian regulation’. Commissioner Cole replied that these matters were ‘significantly different’ to its terms of reference; he essentially could only seek an extension to the substantive issues which had been referred to him, not to those which were significantly different, as the issues raised by us were. The government’s shield is paper thin. I do not believe the government did not know about the kickbacks. When I was Leader of the Opposition in August 2002—before the war but when the government was in full macho mode about invasion—I said that the reckless talk that the government engaged in would jeopardise our wheat sales. In fact, they were suspended. I was accused by Minister Downer of being an appeaser of Saddam Hussein. The AWB met with me and the government on 22 August. They said that the government should tone down its language. They then made an urgent visit to Iraq. They came back with a deal to resume the sales. We now know how. The question is: did the government know? I believe it is going to be very interesting to observe these prosecutions against the people charged. Already some of them have indicated that they will name names when they are pursued for their criminal activity. I look forward with great interest to seeing how those events unfold. In the meantime, let there be no mistake: this government has not been cleared. It stands condemned of gross negligence and gross maladministration. The country has paid for it in terms of its standing. It has paid for it economically. The wheat growers of this country have paid for it. It is a scandal of mammoth proportions and the government should be condemned for overseeing it. 194 21:01:00 Kerr, Duncan, MP RH4 Denison ALP 0 0 Mr KERR —Like Diogenes with his lamp, looking for the honest man, we look for a member of the government who accepts responsibility, whose eyes are open and who is willing to see. As in a bordello where somebody says ‘No sex going on here’, nobody knows. All is silence, all is ignorance, all is unpreparedness to accept the reality of what is happening under the government’s nose. AK6 Gash, Joanna, MP Mrs Gash —On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker – 10000 Hatton, Michael (The DEPUTY SPEAKER) The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Hatton)—I expect the member for Denison to be moving that we now adjourn. RH4 Kerr, Duncan, MP Mr KERR —I move: That the debate be now adjourned. Question agreed to. 194 21:01:00 Main Committee adjourned at 9.01 pm 195 Answers to Questions on Notice 195 195 4077 195 Thomson, Kelvin, MP UK6 Wills ALP 0 Mr Kelvin Thomson asked the Minister representing the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, in writing, on 5 September 2006: In respect of the Bald Hills windfarm project, which was vetoed by the Minister in April, did the Minister’s Department originally recommend that the project proceed. Did the Woolnorth and Musselroe Bay windfarms in Tasmania, and the Portland windfarm in Victoria, pose a greater risk to the Orange Bellied Parrot than the Bald Hills windfarm; if so, why were those projects approved. 195 Truss, Warren, MP GT4 Wide Bay NATS Minister for Trade 1 Mr Truss —The Minister for the Environment and Heritage has provided the following answer to the honourable member’s question: This was one of the Department’s conclusions, however the Department also advised me that the independent Biosis Research Pty Ltd report, Wind farm collision risk for birds – Cumulative risk for threatened and migratory species, had concluded that the Orange-bellied Parrot has a high probability of becoming extinct within the next 50 years and while the impacts of wind farms on the species is low, almost any negative impact on the species could top the balance against its continued existence. The Department also advised me that there is Orange-bellied Parrot foraging habitat within 35 kilometres both east and west of the wind farm site. As Minister, it is my responsibility to consider input and advice from a range of sources. In relation to the Bald Hills windfarm project, I took account of all the relevant factors as set out in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (the EPBC Act). The Woolnorth and Portland Wind Energy Installations were early approvals under the EPBC Act and both were based on the best information available at the time. The Biosis report was completed in February 2006 and contained new and relevant information that I was required to take into account when considering the Bald Hills Wind Energy Installation proposal. The Musselroe Wind Energy Installation was approved in 2005 and is not located within the known distributional range of the Orange-bellied Parrot. 195 195 4084 195 Fitzgibbon, Joel, MP 8K6 Hunter ALP 0 Mr Fitzgibbon asked the Minister for Revenue and Assistant Treasurer, in writing, on 5 September 2006: Will he outline the investigations he has conducted into the allegations made by two Australian taxpayers that their personal tax affairs have been leaked to the press by someone within Project Wickenby. Has he taken steps to seize the anonymous information provided to journalists for the Australian and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers in order to have it forensically tested to determine its source; if not, why not. Does he intend to commence court injunctions against the Australian and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers to prevent further leaks of Australian taxpayers’ personal tax affairs to the media. Does he intend to prosecute the media groups and journalists involved in the leaks under section 8XB of the Taxation Administration Act 1953. In respect of 27 Australian Taxation Office (ATO) staff who admitted last year to inappropriately accessing taxpayer records, (a) did the ATO permit 12 of the staff to resign on the spot, instead of prosecuting them for serious breaches of privacy Were any of the 27 ATO staff referred to in Part (5) at any time part of Project Wickenby, and was any information sourced by those staff part of the Project Wickenby investigation. 196 Dutton, Peter, MP 00AKI Dickson LP Minister for Revenue and Assistant Treasurer 1 Mr Dutton —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: In response to the questions raised, I have sought comment from the Project Wickenby agencies about the allegations: The Project Wickenby agencies, (ATO, Australian Crime Commission, Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, Australian Federal Police and the Australian Securities & Investments Commission) through the issue of a press release issued by the Commissioner of Taxation, have provided public assurances that there is no evidence to support the allegation that taxpayer information was inappropriately provided to the media by someone within Project Wickenby. The agencies involved in Project Wickenby regularly check that appropriate arrangements are in place to prevent inappropriate releases of information. For example, when stories appear in the media, agencies conduct reviews to identify any inappropriate releases of information. The details of these internal checks need to remain confidential for operational reasons. If the information in the media had a relatively wide circulation (among taxpayers, advisers and authorities) it is more difficult to identify the exact source of the information. This is because other sources for the information can exist, such as: parties who may be subject to investigations promoters, intermediaries or participants involved in arrangements legal proceedings within Australia and internationally. There is no evidence to suggest any inappropriate release has occurred that would support such action. and (4) See answer to question 2. Twelve employees exercised their common law right to resign from the ATO during the course of investigations. Formal prosecution of these matters is a decision for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions. No. None of the information accessed by these employees forms part of the Project Wickenby investigation. 196 196 4088 196 Thomson, Kelvin, MP UK6 Wills ALP 0 Mr Kelvin Thomson asked the Minister for Human Services, in writing, on 6 September 2006: In respect of the 790 cases of inappropriate access of client files by Centrelink staff, which were discovered through spyware programs, how many of the cases involved (a) access of the records of friends of the staff members concerned, (b) access of the records of neighbours of the staff members concerned, (c) access of the records of family members of the staff members concerned, or (d) access of the records of former husbands, wives or partners of the staff members concerned. 197 Hockey, Joe, MP DK6 North Sydney LP Minister for Human Services and Minister Assisting the Minister for Workplace Relations 1 Mr Hockey —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: The detailed information required to answer the question is not readily available. To obtain this information would be highly resource intensive and I cannot justify the level of expenditure that would be required to obtain it. To prepare this answer it has taken approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes at an estimated cost of $84. 197 197 4106 197 Ellis, Kate, MP DZU Adelaide ALP 0 Ms Kate Ellis asked the Minister for Education, Science and Training, in writing, on 6 September 2006: At 30 June 2005, for the postcode area (a) 5000, (b) 5006, (c) 5007, (d) 5008, (e) 5031, (f) 5034, (g) 5035, (h) 5061, (i) 5063, (j) 5064, (k) 5065, (l) 5067 (m) 5069, (n) 5070, (o) 5081, (p) 5082, (q) 5083, (r) 5084, (s) 5085 and (t) 5086: how many residents had an outstanding or accumulated HECS debt; how many residents who were not enrolled in tertiary studies had an outstanding or accumulated HECS debt; and what was the total value of the outstanding or accumulated HECS debt of all residents. 197 Bishop, Julie, MP 83P Curtin LP Minister for Education, Science and Training and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women’s Issues 1 Ms Julie Bishop —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: The following data have been provided by the Australian Taxation Office and are subject to the following limitations: Only cases with a valid postcode are included. Some clients may not have a valid address stored. Postcode recorded may not reflect the current residence. The address may be dated, or reflect a contact address other than the place of residence. Higher Education Loan Programme (HELP) debts from first half of 2005 have been included in the outstanding debt count. The data provided is as at 30 June 2005. How many residents had an outstanding or accumulated HECS debt - (a) 5000, (b) 5006, (c) 5007, (d) 5008, (e) 5031, (f) 5034, (g) 5035, (h) 5061, (i) 5063, (j) 5064, (k) 5065, (l) 5067 (m) 5069, (n) 5070, (o) 5081, (p) 5082, (q) 5083, (r) 5084, (s) 5085 and (t) 5086? Postcode 5000 5006 5007 5008 5031 5034 5035 5061 5063 5064 Total 1,402 832 616 868 1,027 1,111 617 1,079 1,347 757 Postcode 5065 5067 5069 5070 5081 5082 5083 5084 5085 5086 Total 961 1,378 941 1,190 776 1,305 529 463 792 834 How many residents who were not enrolled in tertiary studies had an outstanding or accumulated HECS debt - (a) 5000, (b) 5006, (c) 5007, (d) 5008, (e) 5031, (f) 5034, (g) 5035, (h) 5061, (i) 5063, (j) 5064, (k) 5065, (l) 5067 (m) 5069, (n) 5070, (o) 5081, (p) 5082, (q) 5083, (r) 5084, (s) 5085 and (t) 5086? Note: The results relating to question two are for those who did not have a HELP debt reported in the first half year, 2005. The Australian Taxation Office is unable to determine those students who were enrolled in higher education in that half year who paid their HELP contribution up-front. Postcode 5000 5006 5007 5008 5031 5034 5035 5061 5063 5064 Total 1,024 587 467 644 739 779 450 752 997 495 Postcode 5065 5067 5069 5070 5081 5082 5083 5084 5085 5086 Total 666 1,014 643 862 533 908 389 332 591 597 What was the total value of the outstanding or accumulated HECS debt of all residents - (a) 5000, (b) 5006, (c) 5007, (d) 5008, (e) 5031, (f) 5034, (g) 5035, (h) 5061, (i) 5063, (j) 5064, (k) 5065, (l) 5067 (m) 5069, (n) 5070, (o) 5081, (p) 5082, (q) 5083, (r) 5084, (s) 5085 and (t) 5086? Postcode 5000 5006 5007 5008 5031 5034 5035 5061 Total $15.745m $10.007m $5.948m   $8.704m $10.679m $11.707m $6.173m $11.716m Postcode 5063 5064 5065 5067 5069 5070 5081 5082 Total $13.971m $8.061m $10.131m $15.590m $9.811m $11.947m $8.477m $13.551m Postcode 5083 5084 5085 5086 Total $5.576m $4.514m $7.935m $8.347m 198 198 4177 198 Murphy, John, MP 83D Lowe ALP 0 Mr Murphy asked the Minister for Revenue and Assistant Treasurer, in writing, on 5 September 2006: Further to his reply to question No. 8 (Hansard, 5 September 2006, page 69), which I directed to the Treasurer on 17 November 2004, is he aware that I asked the identical question of the Treasurer, and that question was question 2990, which appeared on the Notice Paper of 11 February 2004 and was not answered before the dissolution of the 40th parliament. Why did it take the Australian Taxation Office more than two years and six months to provide the information for the purposes of answering my question. 198 Dutton, Peter, MP 00AKI Dickson LP Minister for Revenue and Assistant Treasurer 1 Mr Dutton —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: Yes. The Commissioner of Taxation advised that the delays in answering the question on notice were as a result of the extensive research and consideration which had to be undertaken to respond to the questions asked. 198 198 4180 198 McClelland, Robert, MP JK6 Barton ALP 0 Mr McClelland asked the Minister for Defence, in writing, on 12 September 2006: Is the niche position for an Australian Defence Force personnel member, involving liaison and assistance to the Palestinian security services, currently vacant; if not; what is the status of the position. Has the Government received any representations from the United States regarding the continuation of the position referred to in Part (1); if so, (a) what representations have been made and (b) what has been the Government’s response. Does the Government plan to continue providing assistance to the Palestinian security services through the position referred to in Part (1); if so, for how long. 198 Nelson, Dr Brendan, MP RW5 Bradfield LP Minister for Defence 1 Dr Nelson —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: The Australian Defence Force had an officer deployed to the United States (US)-led Security Sector Coordination mission between August 2005 and February 2006.  That officer has not been replaced. Yes. (a) and (b) See response to part (3). The issue of future deployments to the position remains one of ongoing correspondence between the Australian and US Governments. 199 199 4281 199 Thomson, Kelvin, MP UK6 Wills ALP 0 Mr Kelvin Thomson asked the Special Minister of State, in writing, on 12 September 2006: For each of the financial years (a) 2003-04, (b) 2004-05, (c) 2005-06 and (d) 2006‑07, will he provide the (i) number, (ii) office (iii) designation and (iv) position of staff employed under the terms of the Members of Parliament (Staff) Act 1984. 199 Nairn, Gary, MP OK6 Eden-Monaro LP Special Minister of State 1 Mr Nairn —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows. The preparation of an answer to these questions would involve a significant diversion of resources, and in the circumstances, I do not consider that the additional work can be justified. The practice of successive governments has been not to authorise the expenditure of time and money involved in assembling such information on a general basis. 199 199 4285 199 Thomson, Kelvin, MP UK6 Wills ALP 0 Mr Kelvin Thomson asked the Minister representing the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, in writing, on 12 September 2006: Has the Minister been advised on the economic cost of reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; if so, what advice has the Minister received. Has the Minister been advised on the economic cost of not reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; if so, what advice has the Minister received. Has the Minister sought external advice on the impact of climate change upon Australia’s economy; if so, when will the Minister publicly release this advice. According to projections made by the Department of the Environment and Heritage, by which year(s) will Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions begin to decline. What proportion of Australia’s vulnerable, threatened and endangered species, and ecological communities, will be adversely influenced by climate change. What is the projected number of indigenous flora and fauna extinctions between 2006 and (a) the year(s) that Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are projected to decline and (b) the year(s) that Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are projected to return to 1990 levels. 199 Truss, Warren, MP GT4 Wide Bay NATS Minister for Trade 1 Mr Truss —The Minister for the Environment and Heritage has provided the following answer to the honourable member’s question: The Department has not commissioned advice on or provided me with its assessment of the economic cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The Department has provided me with briefing for my information, on reports that sought to estimate the economic cost of reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The reports by the Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change – The Business Case for Early Action; and ABARE – The Economic Impact of Climate Change Policy: the Role of Technology and Economic Instruments are in the public domain. The Department’s briefing noted the findings of these reports and that their estimates of costs vary according to the assumptions and scenarios used in their respective economic analysis. One scenario modelled by ABARE closely mirrors that proposed by the Australian Labor Party. It concluded that: Petrol prices would double GDP growth would be 11% lower Real wages would be 21% lower Oil and gas production would fall by 60% Coal production would be down 32% Electricity output would fall by 23% Agriculture would decline by 44% No. No. The Department prepares annual projections that estimate Australia’s greenhouse emissions out to 2020. The 2005 projections (the most recent available) estimate that Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors will be 122 per cent of 1990 by 2020. This includes projected emissions savings of 114 Mt CO2-e from Australian Government and other programmes. In the absence of these measures, Australia’s projected emissions are estimated to be 143 per cent of 1990 by 2020. The projected growth in Australia’s emissions reflects a number of factors including strong economic growth, the fact that Australia unlike many developed countries has a growing population, the energy intensive export driven nature of our economy and the large distances that it is necessary to transport goods. The Government recognises that climate change is likely to have an adverse impact on a number of vulnerable, threatened and endangered species and ecological communities. However, it is not possible to accurately estimate what proportion will be adversely affected. No such projections are available. 200 200 4286 200 Bevis, Arch, MP ET4 Brisbane ALP 0 Mr Bevis asked the Minister for Transport and Regional Services, in writing, on 12 September 2006: In respect of each of the Counter Terrorism First Response Airports, has the department agreed to any security plans that do not require one hundred percent of international checked-baggage to be x-rayed; if so, (a) which airports, (b) when was the approval given, (c) why was the approval given, (d) on what date did the airport undertake to have equipment and procedures in place to ensure one hundred per cent in-line x-raying of international checked-baggage and (e) have those undertakings been met; if not, what action has been taken by the department to ensure compliance. 200 Vaile, Mark, MP SU5 Lyne NATS Minister for Transport and Regional Services 1 Mr Vaile —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: The Aviation Transport Security Regulations 2005 mandate that 100% of international baggage is screened using in-line x-ray equipment. All Counter Terrorism First Response airports have been subject to this requirement since 31 December 2005. 201 201 4290 201 Kerr, Duncan, MP RH4 Denison ALP 0 Mr Kerr asked the Minister for Revenue and Assistant Treasurer, in writing, on 12 September 2006: Is there any provision under the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993, or any other relevant Commonwealth legislation, under which trustees of the Ansett superannuation fund may recover their assets? 201 Dutton, Peter, MP 00AKI Dickson LP Minister for Revenue and Assistant Treasurer 1 Mr Dutton —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: The Government is committed to ensuring that the regulatory framework applying to superannuation is robust and has the confidence of the Australian community. As part of this commitment, the Government has in place safeguards to assist people who lose their superannuation savings through fraudulent conduct or theft. Part 23 of the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993 (the SIS Act) allows the trustee of a superannuation fund to apply to the Minister for Revenue and Assistant Treasurer, as the Minister responsible for superannuation, for a grant of financial assistance where the fund has suffered loss as a result of fraudulent conduct or theft. Under Part 23, the Minister has discretion to grant financial assistance of up to 100 per cent of a loss suffered due to fraudulent conduct or theft, subject to being satisfied that the loss has caused a substantial reduction of the fund’s assets and it is in the public interest for a grant to be made. In relation to the superannuation funds of former employees of the now-defunct Ansett Australia Airlines, I can advise the honourable member that there were five stand-alone Ansett superannuation plans in operation when Ansett Australia Airlines collapsed in 2001. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has advised that the collapse of Ansett Australia Airlines did not necessitate any asset recovery actions in relation to any of the Ansett Plans because the collapse did not result in assets in the Ansett Plans, or the assets of the trustees of the plans, being lost. I am also advised that all outstanding employer contributions concerning the Ansett Plans have been paid. Since the collapse of Ansett Australia Airlines, all of the five Ansett Plans have been wound-up. A new fund called the Ansett Residual Superannuation Fund was established on 1 July 2004 to represent the residual assets and liabilities of two of the wound-up Ansett Plans – the Ansett Australia Ground Staff Superannuation Plan and the Flight Attendants’ Benefits Scheme. APRA continues to supervise the administration of this fund, which is intended to be wound up once all outstanding insurance claims have been settled and surplus assets have been distributed amongst the members. 201 201 4294 201 Ferguson, Martin, MP LS4 Batman ALP 0 Mr Martin Ferguson asked the Minister for Education, Science and Training, in writing, on 12 September 2006: At 30 June 2006, how many people with an outstanding or accumulated HECS debt resided in the postcode area (i) 3058, (ii) 3070, (iii) 3071, (iv) 3072, (v) 3073, (vi) 3078, (vii) 3083 and (viii) 3085. At 30 June 2006, how many people with an outstanding or accumulated HECS debt who were not enrolled in tertiary studies resided in the postcode area (i) 3058, (ii) 3070, (iii) 3071, (iv) 3072, (v) 3073, (vi) 3078, (vii) 3083 and (viii) 3085. At 30 June 2006, what was the value of outstanding or accumulated HECS debt of people that resided in the postcode area (i) 3058, (ii) 3070, (iii) 3071, (iv) 3072, (v) 3073, (vi) 3078, (vii) 3083 and (viii) 3085. 202 Bishop, Julie, MP 83P Curtin LP Minister for Education, Science and Training and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women’s Issues 1 Ms Julie Bishop —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: The following data have been provided by the Australian Taxation Office and are subject to the following limitations: Only cases with a valid postcode are included. Some clients may not have a valid address stored. Postcode recorded may not reflect the current residence. The address may be dated, or reflect a contact address other than the place of residence. The data provided is as at 30 June 2006. People with an outstanding or accumulated HECS debt resided in the postcode area (i) 3058, (ii) 3070, (iii) 3071, (iv) 3072, (v) 3073, (vi) 3078, (vii) 3083 and (viii) 3085. Postcode 3058 3070 3071 3072 3073 3078 3083 3085 Total 2,540 3,011 2,006 2,325 2,454 1,235 1,795 901 People with an outstanding or accumulated HECS debt who were not enrolled in tertiary studies resided in the postcode area (i) 3058, (ii) 3070, (iii) 3071, (iv) 3072, (v) 3073, (vi) 3078, (vii) 3083 and (viii) 3085. Postcode 3058 3070 3071 3072 3073 3078 3083 3085 Total 1,830 2,241 1,500 1,686 1,657 903 1,145 613 Note: The persons identified in this table are those who had a Higher Education Loan Programme (HELP) debt (previously called a HECS debt) reported in one half year, but who did not have a HELP debt reported in the next half year. The Tax Office has not received HELP debts for the first half year, 2006, therefore the results relating to question (2) are for those who did not have a HELP debt reported in the second half year, 2005. The Tax Office is unable to determine those students who were enrolled in higher education in that half year who paid their HELP contribution up-front. Value of outstanding or accumulated HECS debt of people that resided in the postcode area (i) 3058, (ii) 3070, (iii) 3071, (iv) 3072, (v) 3073, (vi) 3078, (vii) 3083 and (viii) 3085 Postcode 3058 3070 3071 3072 3073 3078 3083 3085 Total $27.674m $32.915m $21.829m $25.167m $28.031m $13.143m $21.398m $9.400m 202 202 4295 202 Ferguson, Martin, MP LS4 Batman ALP 0 Mr Martin Ferguson asked the Minister for Human Services, in writing, on 12 September 2006: How many Health Care Card holders reside in (a) Victoria and (b) the postcode area (i) 3058, (ii) 3070, (iii) 3071, (iv) 3072, (v) 3073, (vi) 3078, (vii) 3083 and (viii) 3085. How many Health Care Card holders not receiving a Centrelink payment pension, benefit or equivalent payment reside in (a) Victoria and (b) the postcode area (i) 3058, (ii) 3070, (iii) 3071, (iv) 3072, (v) 3073, (vi) 3078, (vii) 3083 and (viii) 3085. How many Child Support Agency clients reside in (a) Victoria and (b) the postcode area (i) 3058, (ii) 3070, (iii) 3071, (iv) 3072, (v) 3073, (vi) 3078, (vii) 3083 and (viii) 3085. How many Youth Allowance recipients reside in (a) Victoria and (b) the postcode area (i) 3058, (ii) 3070, (iii) 3071, (iv) 3072, (v) 3073, (vi) 3078, (vii) 3083 and (viii) 3085. How many Newstart Allowance recipients reside in (a) Victoria and (b) the postcode area (i) 3058, (ii) 3070, (iii) 3071, (iv) 3072, (v) 3073, (vi) 3078, (vii) 3083 and (viii) 3085. 203 Hockey, Joe, MP DK6 North Sydney LP Minister for Human Services and Minister Assisting the Minister for Workplace Relations 1 Mr Hockey —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: Data on Health Care Card holders by electorate is provided at the following site: http://www.humanservices.gov.au/publications/electorate_data.htm Data on Health Care Card holders not receiving a Centrelink payment pension, benefit or equivalent payment by electorate is provided at the following site: http://www.humanservices.gov.au/publications/electorate_data.htm CSA Customers, effective 30 June 2006 Postcode  Payees  Payers Total 3058 705 782 1487 3070 381 454 835 3071 352 406 758 3072 847 920 1767 3073 1,383 1,470 2853 3078 154 207 361 3083 596 485 1081 3085 279 302 581 Victoria 154,917 154,431 309,348 Data on Youth Allowance by electorate is provided at the following site: http://www.humanservices.gov.au/publications/electorate_data.htm Data on Newstart Allowance by electorate is provided at the following site: http://www.humanservices.gov.au/publications/electorate_data.htm To prepare this answer it has taken 3 hours and 22 minutes at an estimated cost of $188. 203 203 4302 203 Elliot, Justine, MP DZW Richmond ALP 0 Mrs Elliot asked the Minister for Transport and Regional Services, in writing, on 12 September 2006: What programs have been administered by the Minister’s department in the federal electorate of Richmond since October 2004. In respect of each project or program referred to in Part (1), (a) what is its name, (b) by whom is it operated and (c) what are its aims and objectives. What grants have been provided to individuals, businesses and organisations by the Ministers’ department in the federal electorate of Richmond since October 2004. 203 Vaile, Mark, MP SU5 Lyne NATS Minister for Transport and Regional Services 1 Mr Vaile —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: Details of programs administered by the Department of Transport and Regional Services are available in the Department’s Portfolio Budget Statements, its Annual Reports and their website http://www.dotars.gov.au. For the electorate of Richmond, the following funding to individuals, businesses and organisations was approved during 2004-05 and 2005-06: Regional Partnerships Program Approved in 2004-05 Arts Northern Rivers Inc – $30,000 Chillingham and Tyalgum Community Preschool Inc – $88,037 NSW Sugar Milling Co-operative Ltd – $10,800,000 Philip F & Patricia C Stacey – $25,000 Approved in 2005-06 Burringbar School of Arts Hall – $27,070 Byron Bay Shire Council – $304,975 Police & Community Youth Clubs NSW Ltd – $265,341 Tweed Shire Council – $130,000 Tweed Shire Family Day Care Association Inc – $38,957 Uki Village & Districts Residents Association – $39,000 Sustainable Regions Program Approved in 2004-05 Adventure Education Environmental Insights – $42,632 Ant Packaging Pty Ltd – $80,000 House With No Steps – $256,169 Perfectour Pty Ltd – $48,950 University of NSW – $7,632 Wired Sports – $250,800 Approved in 2005-06 Autism Spectrum Australia – $84,150 Feros Care Limited – $138,270 North Coast Area Health Service – $2,200,000 Tweed Economic Development Corporation Ltd – $239,566 204 204 4329 204 Plibersek, Tanya, MP 83M Sydney ALP 0 Ms Plibersek asked the Minister for Health and Ageing, in writing, on 12 September 2006: In respect of employees who salary-sacrifice income to pay for childcare: (a) does the agency know whether all such employees use childcare that is on Commonwealth business premises; (b) how many salary-sacrifice arrangements made by employees relating to childcare is for care not conducted on Commonwealth business premises; (c) how much fringe benefit tax did the agency pay in financial year (i) 2004-05 and (ii) 2005-06 sacrificed by employees for childcare that was not on Commonwealth business premises. Is fee assistance given by the agency for childcare in school holidays an allowance and reported on employees’ group certificates; if not, what is the tax-status of the assistance, and has the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) given advice that confirms its status. How much reimbursement is given by the agency for additional costs incurred by employees in meeting childcare fees needed by the employee because of travel or extra duties. Is the reimbursement referred to in Part (3) for approved care only, or can it be paid for any carer paid by the employee. Is the reimbursement referred to in Part (3) reported as an allowance on employees’ group certificates; if not, what is the tax-status of the reimbursed amount. 205 Abbott, Tony, MP EZ5 Warringah LP Minister for Health and Ageing 1 Mr Abbott —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: Not applicable. and (5) No. The taxation consequences of a reimbursement of school holiday childcare is that the reimbursement does not constitute assessable income of the employee, under s 26(e) of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936, as the payment is a fringe benefit within the meaning of the Fringe Benefits Tax Assessment Act 1986. Accordingly, the payment is subject to Fringe Benefits Tax as an expense payment fringe benefit. This treatment is consistent with the ATOs view in Tax Ruling 92/15. The Department’s Certified Agreement makes provisions for the reimbursement of some or all of the costs incurred by the employee where the Department requires that employee to be away from home outside of normal working hours. Reimbursement can be made for any care paid by the employee. 205 205 4343 205 Murphy, John, MP 83D Lowe ALP 0 Mr Murphy asked the Minister for Education, Science and Training, in writing, on 13 September 2006: How many university undergraduate courses in New South Wales had indicative course costs of over $100,000 for students beginning their studies in 2006? Which university undergraduate courses in New South Wales had indicative course costs of over $100,000 for students beginning their studies in 2006? How many Australian full fee-paying students in the federal electorate of Lowe are currently enrolled in each of the courses identified in Part (2)? What is the average starting salary of HECS students who graduated from each of the courses identified in Part (2) in (a) 2005 and (b) 2006? What is the average starting salary of full fee-paying students who graduated from each of the courses identified in Part (2) in (a) 2005 and (b) 2006? 205 Bishop, Julie, MP 83P Curtin LP Minister for Education, Science and Training and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women’s Issues 1 Ms Julie Bishop —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: Information submitted by higher education providers in August 2005 to the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) on courses to be offered in 2006 included 69 undergraduate courses, of which 63 (91 percent) are combined degrees, to be offered by NSW providers with indicative tuition fees for domestic fee-paying students of more than $100,000. Undergraduate courses offered by NSW universities with indicative tuition fees for domestic fee-paying students of more than $100,000 are listed at Attachment A. DEST does not yet have verified data on student enrolments for 2006.  Data for the first half of 2006 is expected to be publicly available by March 2007.  Data for the second half of 2006 is not required to be submitted by universities until 31 March 2007.  DEST does not collect data on the starting salaries of graduates.  Information on starting salaries is collected by Graduate Careers Australia through the annual Graduate Destination Survey.  The latest report is Graduate Starting Salaries 2005, which provides information on the starting salaries of students who completed their qualifications in 2004, reported at the broad field of education level rather than at course level. See 4) above. 206 206 4387 206 Thomson, Kelvin, MP UK6 Wills ALP 0 Mr Kelvin Thomson asked the Minister for Human Services, in writing, on 14 September 2006: In respect of the new computerised system that provides numbered tickets, which is currently being tested in some Medicare offices, (a) in which offices is it being tested, (b) how were the offices selected and (c) why were the offices selected. Will he provide cost details of the computerised system testing process, including (a) the total budgeted cost, (b) the cost of the computer equipment, (c) the cost of installation, (d) maintenance costs and (e) running costs for each office. What are the details of the testing program, including the performance indicators. What is the estimated total cost of installing the system in all Medicare offices across Australia. 206 Hockey, Joe, MP DK6 North Sydney LP Minister for Human Services and Minister Assisting the Minister for Workplace Relations 1 Mr Hockey —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: As of 22 September 2006, electronic queue systems have been installed in the following 43 Medicare offices: ACT/NSW: Burwood, Chatswood, Gungahlin, Hornsby, Leichhardt, Lismore, Martin Place, North Ryde, Parramatta, Tuggerah, Tuggeranong, Wynyard QLD: Brookside, Cairns, Chermside, Cleveland, Elanora, Indooroopilly, Maroochydore, North Rockhampton, Pacific Fair, Smithfield, Toowoomba, Wynnum NT: Palmerston TAS: Devonport, Hobart, Launceston VIC: Box Hill, Camberwell, Coburg, Cranbourne, Dandenong, Doncaster, Frankston, Galleria, Glen Waverley, Highpoint, Mornington, Prahran WA: Booragoon, Hillarys, Joondalup and (c) Electronic queue systems were installed in some medium to large offices   where the new Medicare Office design was being trialled, where a new Medicare office had been established or where a demand existed for a tool to assist with queue management.   The current average cost of a stand-alone electronic queue system is approximately $30,000 per office. This includes all hardware and software for each system plus installation. There are no maintenance costs for the first 12 months. The running costs of the electronic queue systems are absorbed into each Medicare office’s overall running costs. Each queue system is a stand-alone system and is monitored for data accuracy and responsiveness in providing management reports. Electronic queue systems will not be installed in all Medicare Offices across Australia. Queue systems will be installed in Medicare Offices where there is a demonstrated business need. To prepare this answer it has taken approximately 3 hours at an estimated cost of $189. 206 206 4389 206 Thomson, Kelvin, MP UK6 Wills ALP 0 Mr Kelvin Thomson asked the Minister for Human Services, in writing, on 14 September 2006: How many enforcement summonses for outstanding child support debts have been issued by the Child Support Registrar in each financial year since 1 July 1996. In respect of the enforcement summonses identified in Part (1), (a) how many resulted in the issue of an arrest warrant, (b) in any instance was the reason for the issuing of the warrant found to be incorrect, (c) in any instance were proceedings subsequently dropped; if so, what are the details and (d) did any of the arrest warrants lead to complaints against arresting officers for the use of excessive force; if so, what are the details. 207 Hockey, Joe, MP DK6 North Sydney LP Minister for Human Services and Minister Assisting the Minister for Workplace Relations 1 Mr Hockey —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: Information relating to enforcement summonses that are issued in connection to Child Support Agency (CSA) matters are stored on the customer’s hard copy file. There are approximately 4,800 hard copy litigation files, stored in various sites throughout Australia. This information is not readily accessible. Based on the information that is available, the CSA estimates that approximately 2800 enforcement summonses have been issued by the CSA since 1996. An enforcement summons is issued by a Magistrate in order to have the child support debtor advise the court about assets, property interests and income so that appropriate orders may be made by the court to ensure payment of the child support debt. An enforcement summons is issued by the relevant court and summonses the respondent child support debtor to the court on the date notified. If the debtor fails to appear in court on the day specified then the magistrate may decide to issue an arrest warrant. The Child Support Agency would only support the issuing of an arrest warrant as a last resort where all other attempts at negotiation and enforcement for the payment of the child support debt have been unsuccessful and the debtor fails to appear in court on more than one occasion. As explained above information relating to arrest warrants is stored in the customer’s hard copy file and not readily accessible. Based on the information available, the CSA is aware of approximately 50 instances where arrest warrants have been issued in relation to child support matters since 1996. The records available indicate that only three arrest warrants have been executed since 1996. In each of these cases, negotiation for the payment of child support had broken down and the child support debtor repeatedly failed to appear before the court to discuss their refusal to pay child support. The CSA is aware of one instance where the reason for issuing an arrest warrant was subsequently determined to be incorrect. In this case the child support debtor failed to appear in court because he was already in custody on an unrelated matter. As explained above, information relating to arrest warrants is stored in the customer’s hardcopy file and not readily accessible. The CSA is unable to provide a specific figure in relation to this question. The CSA does not collect or hold information relating to the carrying out of arrest warrants. The Australian Federal Police or the relevant State Police are responsible for carrying out arrest warrants in relation to these matters. 208 208 4390 208 Thomson, Kelvin, MP UK6 Wills ALP 0 Mr Kelvin Thomson asked the Minister for Human Services, in writing, on 14 September 2006: In respect of the new Centrelink website, Customer Services Online, will he provide details of: (a) all costs associated with development and maintenance and the total cost; and (b) the number of users that have accessed the website (i) daily, (ii) weekly and (iii) monthly. In respect of the main Centrelink website, will he provide details of: (a) the number of users that access the main Centrelink website (i) daily, (ii) weekly and (iii) monthly; (b) the number of occasions the website has been offline since 2005 (i) intentionally and (ii) unintentionally and (iii) the length of time the website was not functioning; (c) the primary reason for each unintentional outage; and (d) the number of complaints received by Centrelink about each unintentional outage. In respect of the online services available through the main Centrelink website: (a) how many online services and forms are available to customers; (b) how many customers have registered for online services (i) each month since the website’s inception; (c) what is the current number of registered customers; and (d) how many forms have been submitted by customers for each online service since January 2005. 208 Hockey, Joe, MP DK6 North Sydney LP Minister for Human Services and Minister Assisting the Minister for Workplace Relations 1 Mr Hockey —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: There are no maintenance costs to date as the site is still under development. The total development cost for the 2005-06 financial year was $2,143,103 and the cost for the 2006-07 financial year to 30 September is $490,629. Month (2006) Avg per Day (i) Avg per Week (ii) Per Month (iii) June 21 147 648 July 19 133 591 August 238 1,666 7,382 September 960 6,720 28,804   Month (2006) Avg per Day (i) Avg per Week (ii) Per month (iii) January 24,801 173,607 768,831 February 25,886 181,202 724,816 March 25,117 175,819 778,648 April 20,906 146,342 627,199 May 23,304 163,128 722,425 June 27,203 190,421 816,095 July 34,238 239,666 1,061,387 August 29,775 208,425 923,051 September 29,590 207,130 887,707 Records have not been kept as to the specific reason for website outages. They have predominantly been due to hardware or software upgrades (i.e. intentional) As per response to 2 (b) (i) The table below shows the length of time the website was not functioning for each outage: Outage Date Duration (in hours: minutes) (iii) 16 March 2005 00:08 22 April 2005 00:09 24 August 2005 02:54 25 August 2005 01:55 20 September 2005 00:09 26 October 2005 00:08 25 November 2005 00:09 16 December 2005 00:20 16 March 2006 00:15 22 March 2006 00:05 6 April 2006 00:05 12 April 2006 00:06 16 April 2006 15:55 17 April 2006 15:55 18 April 2006 09:40 16 June 2006 00:09 24 September 2006 00:05 As per response to 2 (b) (i) As per response to 2 (b) (i) There are 55 online services available to customers and all Centrelink forms are available on the Centrelink website. Month First Registration November 02 444 December 02 1,354 January 03 611 February 03 599 March 03 748 April 03 1,757 May 03 2,497 June 03 4,444 July 03 19,593 August 03 22,130 September 03 13,823 October 03 10,432 November 03 6,679 December 03 8,129 January 04 8,946 February 04 8,060 March 04 10,014 April 04 8,451 May 04 15,990 June 04 54,621 July 04 30,706 August 04 13,963 September 04 23,956 October 04 11,828 November 04 21,501 December 04 21,870 January 05 18,840 February 05 22,165 March 05 26,070 April 05 22,639 May 05 23,013 June 05 45,402 July 05 43,304 August 05 33,338 September 05 28,224 October 05 30,523 November 05 29,484 December 05 28,937 January 06 36,857 February 06 41,520 March 06 50,816 April 06 44,251 May 06 62,371 June 06 64,963 July 06 50,320 August 06 41,667 September 06 40,630 As at 22 September 2006, 1,180,868 customers have a password to use Centrelink’s on-line services. Not all services provided online by Centrelink replace a previous form. From the period January 2005 to 31 July 2006, Centrelink customers have updated their records 13 million times. With respect to claims submitted on-line since January 2006, customers have submitted: 11,975 Claims for a Newborn Child (introduced December 2005); 38,208 Claims for a Student (introduced April 2005); and 1,490 Claims for a New Apprenticeship or Traineeship (introduced April 2005). To prepare this answer it has taken 26 hours and 25 minutes at an estimated cost of $1337. 211 211 4391 211 Thomson, Kelvin, MP UK6 Wills ALP 0 Mr Kelvin Thomson asked the Minister for Human Services, in writing, on 14 September 2006: In respect of Audit Report No. 43 2005-06: (a) when is the next random sample surveys report due; (b) will there be any changes to the methodology in conducting the surveys and presenting the results as recommended in Recommendations 6, 7, 8 and 9; (c) given that Centrelink agreed to all nine report recommendations, will the next ANAO survey report show how results are derived in accordance with Recommendations 1 and 2; and (d) what action has Centrelink done to comply with Recommendation 3. What discussions has Centrelink had with the purchaser departments about the presentation and analysis of review and compliance reports and activities to comply with Recommendation 3. What changes has Centrelink made to its payment assessment and rate determination processes to improve customer compliance in respect of the provision of correct and complete information on time and in a proper manner to avoid/minimise incorrect assessments and payments. What changes has Centrelink made to staff instructions and/or training to improve customer compliance in respect of the provision of correct and complete information on time and in a proper manner to avoid/minimise incorrect assessments and payments. What discussions have been had, and what action has been taken, by Centrelink in respect of the purchaser departments to ensure compliance with Recommendation 5. 211 Hockey, Joe, MP DK6 North Sydney LP Minister for Human Services and Minister Assisting the Minister for Workplace Relations 1 Mr Hockey —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: Centrelink is unaware of any future ANAO audit report on the random sample survey programme. In accordance with recommendation 7, new questionnaires have been developed and implemented in conjunction with the three policy departments. Centrelink is unaware of any future ANAO audit report on the random sample survey programme. Centrelink’s Annual Report 2005-06 will report on its level of payment correctness in accordance with recommendations 1 and 2. Centrelink’s Business Integrity Division has brought together in one branch functional responsibility for payment correctness and analysis of the reasons for incorrectness. At this stage there have been no formal discussions with the policy departments. These discussions will commence in the coming weeks. Please see response at (1.d). Centrelink is working to improve customer compliance in the following ways: Support the System that Supports You campaign Media campaign encouraging people to notify Centrelink of any changes of circumstances that may affect Centrelink payments. Self Service Many customers are now able to meet their reporting obligations online or via interactive voice response. Forms Centrelink, Medicare Australia and the Child Support Agency have been working to simplify and improve forms and letters they use to administer payments and services. This improvement will make forms more consistent and easier for customers to complete correctly. Centrelink has reinforced with staff their responsibility to ensure that customers understand their obligation to report their circumstances accurately and in a timely way. This has included staff training and updates to reference documents. Business Partnership Agreements signed with each of the policy departments make provision for appropriate procedures in respect of recommendation 5. To prepare this answer it has taken 6 hours and 25 minutes at an estimated cost of $339. 212 212 4589 212 Thomson, Kelvin, MP UK6 Wills ALP 0 Mr Kelvin Thomson asked the Minister for Transport and Regional Services, in writing, on 14 September 2006: At 12 September 2006, what office space rented by the Minister’s department was vacant. In respect of vacant office space identified in Part (1), (a) from what date has it been vacant, (b) how long will it remain vacant: (c) what is the monthly rental cost and (d) how long will the department continue to pay rental. 212 Vaile, Mark, MP SU5 Lyne NATS Minister for Transport and Regional Services 1 Mr Vaile —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: Two small parcels located in Rosebery, Sydney equating to 537.4 sqm. The sites were decommissioned on 10 September 2006. The Department is seeking to release the parcels to the market and is hopeful of release by the end of 2006. $9,630.29 per month The Department is seeking to release the parcels to the market and is hopeful of release by the end of 2006. 212 212 4693 212 Andren, Peter, MP KL6 Calare IND 0 Mr Andren asked the Minister for Transport and Regional Services, in writing, on 9 October 2006: In respect of the continuing decline in rural and regional air services, can he advise (a) if the Government will respond to the Transport and Regional Services Committee’s 2003 report Regional Aviation & Island Services: Making Ends Meet, and (b) when this response will be made; and (c) if no response is to be made, why not. 212 Vaile, Mark, MP SU5 Lyne NATS Minister for Transport and Regional Services 1 Mr Vaile —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: The recommendations of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Transport and Regional Services’ report, Regional Aviation and Island Transport Services: Making Ends Meet, covers a wide range of issues requiring a whole-of-government response. The Government is currently considering the 28 recommendation contained in the report and is working towards tabling its response as soon as possible. 212 212 4695 212 McClelland, Robert, MP JK6 Barton ALP 0 Mr McClelland asked the Minister for Defence, in writing, on 9 October 2006: What development plans does the Government have for the Point Cook RAAF Base. What forms of community consultation have been pursued as part of the decision‑making process for the future of the site, and what has been the feedback from consultation. Has the Government prepared an impact statement for the effect on local business of rescinding the leases on the Base; if so, what were the findings of the impact statement. Has the Government considered the effect of any future development at Point Cook RAAF Base on items of heritage value within the Base; if so, what were the findings of the impact statement and does the Government have plans to protect items of heritage value located within the Point Cook RAAF Base. 213 Nelson, Dr Brendan, MP RW5 Bradfield LP Minister for Defence 1 Dr Nelson —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: Defence is conducting two reviews to guide decisions regarding the future use of RAAF Williams Point Cook. The first is an accommodation review of Melbourne that will address the future Defence accommodation requirements in the greater Melbourne metropolitan area. The second is a strategic review of options for the future use of RAAF Williams Point Cook. Both reviews are expected to be completed by the end of 2006. The Government remains committed to retaining RAAF Williams Point Cook in Defence ownership and use. The Deputy Chief of Air Force held a meeting with stakeholders and interest groups on 30 October 2006 at RAAF Williams Point Cook to provide an update on the Air Force Point Cook Development Review. In addition, the RAAF Heritage Advisory Council has met three times and has developed a discussion paper that is under consideration by the Chief of Air Force. The Council was formed to provide advice on the strategy and policy that will preserve RAAF heritage and the RAAF Museum. Once Defence reviews of the future use of RAAF Williams Point Cook are completed, it is anticipated that further consultation with stakeholders and interest groups will occur between January and June 2007. No. A Heritage Management Plan for RAAF Williams Point Cook has been completed and this will be used to guide detailed heritage assessments to be carried out before any action is taken to modify, refurbish or demolish any buildings. The plan details how to best conserve, manage and promote the heritage value of RAAF Williams Point Cook for current and future generations. It remains the Government’s intention to maintain the heritage of RAAF Williams Point Cook and ensure its future as an operating airfield. 213 213 4699 213 Fitzgibbon, Joel, MP 8K6 Hunter ALP 0 Mr Fitzgibbon asked the Treasurer (Costello), in writing, on 9 October 2006: How may companies with a capital value of (a) $100,000-$199,999, (b) $200,000-$299,999, (c) $300,000-$399,999, (d) $400,000-$499,999 and (e) 500,000 or more paid the ASIC Incorporation fee for the financial year (i) 2003-04, (ii) 2004-05 and (iii) 2005-06. 213 Costello, Peter, MP CT4 Higgins LP Treasurer 1 Mr Costello —The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: The incorporation fee is paid before a company is registered. It is an up-front fee paid at the time the promoter of the company applies to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) for the company to be registered and, as such, is paid before the company has any assets. Information on the total number of new companies registered by ASIC in each of the years specified in the question is available in the ASIC annual report.